Pittsburgh City Councilors and board members of the Pittsburgh Parking Authority have found themselves gridlocked over how to address a staffing shortage at the authority. And a proposal for the authority to waive its residency requirement drew debate at a Council gathering Thursday.
It’s long been a struggle to hire parking enforcement officers and garage attendants to work for the agency, which operates public parking garages, surface lots, and metered street parking. And on January 16, the authority’s board plans to vote on a plan that would open up those jobs to people who live outside of Pittsburgh.
The authority has had a residency requirement since the mid-1980s. And City Councilor Bobby Wilson, who sits on the authority board, says he wants to keep it.
“Going straight to lifting residency I think would be a poor decision,” Wilson said during a post-agenda meeting.
Wilson said the authority should consider raising wages to make sure it’s offering jobs that people can afford to stay in. Currently, garage workers can make a maximum of around $20 an hour, and parking enforcement officers earn a maximum of just under $22 an hour. (Union contracts for those workers are up for negotiation later this year.)
Wilson said he would like to see wages more like those offered at the city Department of Public Works, where jobs start at $24 an hour.
“People actually see a career” in public works, Wilson said after the council session had ended. “They actually can see themselves: ‘OK, if I succeed at this position, then I could have increased wages. My salary could increase. I could become a supervisor.”
By contrast, he said, “as a parking meter enforcement person, you're topping out at $21 an hour, even if you worked for them for 20 years.”
Parking authority executive director David Onorato told council that the authority rejected roughly 80 applicants last year because they didn’t live in Pittsburgh. Removing the residency requirement, he said, would be a good – and cost-free – first step toward addressing staffing needs.
“We're looking to try to create an efficient authority, and this is the first step that I see that will not cost us any additional funding,” Onorato said.
He acknowledged that neither removing the residency requirement nor raising wages is guaranteed to solve the problem. If eliminating the residency rule doesn’t work, he said, “We’ll try to address it through wages and negotiations.”
Wilson pointed out during the post-agenda presentation that the authority does an uneven job of posting jobs online, and said he would like to see more reliable notifications — and potentially a partnership with local employment offices.
Councilor Bob Charland also focused on the authority’s pay rates.
“The idea that you can't make more than $21 an hour and we're going to expect you to have this job as your career, I just don't see how that works,” Charland said.
“I can see that is definitely the easier move to lift residency, because there wouldn't be a financial constraint,” he added. “I don't know that it's the better move. We should have our employees serving the neighborhoods that they live in, and also paying our wage taxes … for all of the things that we love about the city.”
Wilson said maintaining sufficient staff at the authority was important for several reasons. The city relies on parking tax revenues to help pay for city operations and to shore up its pension fund, so reduced enforcement could have a financial impact. Reduced staffing could also compromise safety in parking garages, and force the city’s resource-strapped police bureau to handle parking issues.
The authority is “a real asset for us, and so we want to see that run at top speed,” Wilson said. “I would like to see people that are working there making family-sustaining wages at the same time.”
The Parking Authority’s board plans to vote on the proposed residency requirement at a meeting next Thursday.
