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Business as Usual Featuring City of Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto

We couldn't be more excited to celebrate our 100th episode of Business as Usual by featuring City of Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto. We promise a lively conversation around Mayor Peduto's vision for cities in the post-pandemic era; predictions on how cities and metro areas will need to transform to remain competitive; and thoughts on building more equity and safety for city residents. It wouldn't be a true conversation if Mayor Peduto didn't answer your questions on the webcast. Please join us to celebrate 100 webcasts since the beginning of the pandemic.



Transcript:

Hey, thanks for the puppet show as well. I did a puppet show. I told everyone that I did a puppet show. And I flunked. So, let me let you know what can you do? So listen, first of all, Thank you so much, everyone. The mayor, as I mentioned earlier, he was a learning earn meeting. That's a really important program in the city for our for our kids. So I didn't want to push him any harder than he was. And you know, for for you, Mayor, this is good. It's only about eight months off. So this is I say, this is a good, this is a good showing. So thank you so much for being with us today.

Okay. My pleasure. And let me just talk about that for one second. Before we get into the other discussion is for those companies that aren't a part of summer earn and learn. I would ask you to look into it and I'd asked Brian and Audrey to send you the link is we had 1700 students this year. I mean with COVID that had the opportunity to work it companies throughout the city and throughout the county. And I just got off. Zoom to the young women both go to community college. Allegheny County, one who did her internship at West Penn hospital, the other who did her internship at PJ Deke working on the terminal building in the Strip District, in engineering student in a nursing student. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant young women who otherwise would never have had a shot at being able to do this. And if you can imagine 1700 saying, I don't think that's good. We're looking at ways in order to create social equity and address racial disparity. There is no better way than getting your company involved in helping to employ these kids over the summer. Oh, and guess what? We raised money so that not only do they get paid, but you get paid for how hosting. So it's a win win or if you don't want to do that, make a contribution to the program so that others Other companies can do it. And especially in technology where there is such a divide women, minorities and others, Oh, my gosh, help them at the age of 18 1920. And you'll help to change their lives.

So here's someone actually in the audience saying she did. This is Stephanie Shinae, saying she didn't earn and learn. It's fabulous. She did a similar program in high school with the Steelers when she was 15 and 16. In the middle. Now, I so love your passion on that. So since I was doing the puppet show, what we did is we actually asked people to put in the chat a whole bunch of questions and sort of lay that up. I had a whole bunch of questions, but I think we might want to set the stage on a couple of things. But before we just jump right into those questions, is that you know, there's an interview that was just released with Richard Florida, so he's an old friend of yours. You've known him, gosh, 2025 years right? in your city council, I believe.

And, you know, he, in the interview that somebody Pittsburgh quarterly he talks about, you know, Pittsburgh, obviously transformation changes and his love, etc. But here's here's a quote that I just want to extract he says, I think Pittsburgh should be the model of the best, the most equitable, the most inclusive, the healthiest, the safest and most resilient small city in the world. Hats off to build to do them. So let's, that's the way I wanted to sort of set the table. But I want to do to realize that there are a ton of things you have initiatives that you've started in terms of equity, inclusion, safety, I mean, there are so many things that you're working on. And you know, we're in this whole new world, we're in this new world that we're not going to go back to and I know that you have a passion about the restaurants, the music scene, you know the importance of the fabric of this region and the things that matter so deeply to the tech community. So I don't know if you wanted to say a few things. And then Jonathan, and I sort of just start to amp, ask you some of the questions that people, you know, want to talk to you about, if that's okay, absolutely.

So that's, that's a great way. And I appreciate that. So we're dealing right now with a pandemic that we haven't dealt with since 1918. We're dealing with the reality of economic collapse that we haven't dealt with since 1932. And we're dealing with civil rights movement that we haven't dealt with since 1968. All simultaneously, right. We have all of these really very difficult challenges. And as I said to one of my fellow mayor's last week, there is just it's a really, really difficult time to be a mayor because you're wrong, no matter what you say. And you're wrong on both sides and people just don't want it Hear, but they want to hear. And there has never been a better time to be a mayor because that type of change doesn't happen without these types of situations.

So the combination of all this happening together provides us the opportunity to make big changes that we wouldn't have without it. So, yeah, you lose sleep, you lose a lot. But at that same time, you also have this opportunity to pull together ideas and be able to do things. Now, there's challenges because, you know, you see the protests happening in the streets and you hear young people talking about abolishing police, abolishing jails, just taking on radical approaches, but you understand that like solutions require more pragmatic approaches and able to see systemic change requires partnerships that go well beyond city government. And you can't burn the bridges with those that you're going to need to be the partners. In order to make that change happen. You have to be able to pull it together, while at the same time being cognizant listening to young voices. And so there are the challenges that are out there and they're very real. But the opportunity has never been so primed for real change to occur. And I'll leave that out there as sort of a setup to answering the questions. So where where we are, and where every Mayor that I talked to is around this country, we realize that changes and coming from Washington, and we realize that it's going to be slow to happen from our state capitals. That real change is is only going to occur locally. And it's going to occur through partnerships with stakeholders that are committed to their cities. So Richard Florida set is absolutely correct. And they only happen if people have pride in Pittsburgh.

So before we jump into this, there's there's a gentleman in here, Larry Goya who reminds me that this is an important question to always ask. And you are in you know, definitely in a role that requires you and I love the way you laid that up. Yeah, there's nothing you can do, right? There's nothing I can do wrong. And in the course of a day, how are you holding up? How are you doing? You built to do though, I'd be doing a hell of a lot better if the penguins won last night.
gave it away.

To be honest with you, it's rough and there's a lot of consoling that we've been doing as mares on a weekly basis doing these types of things and just going, what the hell is going on in this right? I get and I understand that there are those that are going through a lot of pain right now. And the either emotional hurt or sadness or anger brings about a different way of dealing with issues and I just try to be above the emotional part and try to focus on the pragmatic part. In the thing that really gets me by is the positive conversations so less social media, more dealing with people who are looking for Positive selections. Sounds like a plan.

Yeah, it's really important. I hope you're taking care of yourself, whatever that means. Whether that's sleep, rest, eat, who knows. But it's important because we need to at the epicenter of all this local stuff. So let's jump into some questions here, people, there's a litany of questions and out of fairness, I flunked on the puppet show. So I'd really like to be able to have some of these questions be asked. So, I mean, can you address housing during the pandemic, and moving forward with fair and affordable housing?

Yeah, I think that is you start to look at disparity and you look at it through the lens of data, being able to show where actual disparity exists based upon race, based upon income based upon gender. The three big issues They create cyclical prop poverty or housing, transportation, education and the fourth issue being access to quality health care, both physical and mental. Those are sort of like the foundations of where you need to be able to address the city of Pittsburgh with failed on housing. And I'll say that we have a system that's basically dictated through the federal and state government. That makes it very difficult. Sorry, that's not Coronavirus, that's fine allergies so that makes it very difficult to recycle land.
Hopefully that help? Yeah.

We have 17,000 bacon lots abandoned housing in condemned properties throughout the city of Pittsburgh. Yep, we don't have a system that identifies the ability to do partnerships with faith based institutions, nonprofits, local organizations to turn those blighted properties and put them back on the tax roll through affordable means of home ownership. We don't have a plan to take several of those properties and make it part of our green infrastructure plan for stormwater management. And we don't have a plan to take part of those in combine them together to build parks and neighborhoods that don't have access to any green space whatsoever. So that every member of the city of Pittsburgh, every single person has a park within 10 minute walk. That is our goal for the 2021 budget, to be able to put into place the resources to be able to do just that. I have a lot of have interest from churches from neighborhood groups and others to be able to take on three, four or five properties on a street and completely change the character of the street. Instead of having an abandoned property as an anchor that's pulling it down, having it as an anchor that it's building the community around it. We've focused wrong, so wrong in this country. And housing. Housing is not a place to sleep. Housing. Thank you, James. Thanks, James. Housing is a community. It's a place where you have access to food, where you have access to transportation, where you have access to a church, where you have access to a gym, where you have access to a school, that's a community. What we did is we built housing for poor people up on top of a hill with absolutely nothing thing around it completely isolated and encapsulated poverty and expected people to break out of poverty. There's no successful model that is worked that way. And we should be looking more towards like what Vienna did after world war one when it was no longer the world's capital, it was a small rural country's capital. And they created new housing opportunities for the homeless that were around 20% of the population in that housing was connected by rail, and it had a school and it had a doctor's office and it had a library and had all the things that made a community. We have to rethink housing. And one last thing I'll say with that, yes, we let two generations live in public housing. We failed that. That that is our job not just to provide that housing when you're in public housing, but to making sure that your children are doing well in school, to making sure That you have access to the tools to break out of that, in that your next generation of children are not required to live under public housing. So mayor, what's happened with the land bank initiative that's still that's still going on, is that we're looking at tearing it apart. Under Pennsylvania State law, it is very difficult to be able to clear title even with the benefit of the land bank system. So either we will create, like decal jury had a Department of Housing or we'll work with the Ura to create a housing initiative under that, that we have siloed for about 30 years. Our real estate holdings in our finance department, our housing development planning, under planning, or economic development, under housing in our public subsidized housing under the housing of 40 you can't operate that way can't operate under four separate systems. It has to be one housing initiative. We thought lambay was the answer. And we may have been wrong.

So I'm going to just switch for one minute, we're going to go back to the questions and it's something that in the world that I live in, and the tech community lives in, okay, just so for a minute in terms of work, so we're seeing a growing trend of obviously remote right work from home. We've already seen that and we've had to do that for for an array of reasons. But we now we're seeing remote first as a an opportunity. So if you and I have a company together, and we decide that we want to hire Jonathan, who's living in Salt Lake City, we decided we're going to let him live in Salt Lake City, he's going to continue to work for us. He doesn't need to move to Pittsburgh, so people are feeling more comfortable allowing those kinds of things happening with sub How will this change cities and regions you have to be hearing this from other mayors as well, because you know, there is a little bit of an assumed exodus from some big cities. But it seems like that people are moving to other sort of smaller cities like an Austin or Chicago etc. We'll see it with the census for sure. When the data comes out, see hear any you have any thoughts on that? Do you have any? You know, I know in Tulsa, Oklahoma, they're paying people $10,000 if they can work remote and move to Tulsa.
Yeah. I in Tulsa is actually a beautiful city you haven't been it's, it's never shocked. It's as nice as it is.

So just a little background, Pittsburgh was in the running to host the bubble for the NHL. And as we were looking at all the different factors, one of the big issues that the NHL brought up was the access to healthcare. How could we provide provide a safe environment for not only all the players but everyone else that would be associated, and interviews happened with both Allegheny Health Network and UPMC. I think as we look at what the post COVID world looks like, there is going to be a need for your cities to focus in on availability of healthcare. I think that telemedicine is going to grow exponentially. I believe that every hotel is going to have a telemedicine portal for people who are staying at the hotel and that there's going to be this whole new economy opening up around telemedicine and everything. Other than that, the idea of where we are geographically located as people slowly start to take flights again, is a incredible benefit. We have that ability to be dropped Within five hours, everywhere from Baltimore to Detroit, you know, it's a geographically we can have people gather when people gather again, in looking at that, within the tech world, I still see us growing. And I talked to not only the the companies that are located here that are homegrown, but those moved here in order to have an r&d hub. And I talked to developers who were also talking with the company's national international basis. There is a very strong appetite to grow. Companies within Pittsburgh. So I see that as being a benefit as well. And then the last part of it is we're under the microscope just like every other city and we talk about this as mares. How are we going to deal with the present COVID crisis and the anticipated crisis in October, November, when the corona virus season begins and the flu season begins, we go into it with numbers like we have now, it's going to be very detrimental, if we are able to lower those numbers and then have an adequate response that lessens the amount of people who are affected. We have incredible opportunities for things such as the film industry that is not going back to New York that is not going back to Los Angeles to be able to draw them here.

So that's a great example. Yeah. And you know, it's it actually is is very heartbreaking to me to see the decimation of restaurants and, and small businesses here because we've been known as a region around the world for being the best place to grow small companies. We ranked like number 16 in the last kalkman report about the best place for To build small companies. So I'm going to ask Jonathan to, to start to ask some of the questions that have been asked and the magically just, you know, be mindful that they're coming at you with all over the place.
Place. Great stuff here. One that's out to me is what are your thoughts on driving more safety and Market Square during the afternoon hours?
Yeah. What we've seen is from around the city, dealers who worked mainly neighborhood areas have moved into downtown. So the folks that were pushing heroin along east Ohio street in the north side, have crossed over the bridges and they've been moving into downtown, simply because there's nobody on the street on East Ohio street, and they can't blend in. And with the access of public transportation to downtown, the number of centers that deal with addiction and homeless And provide services downtown. We've seen an increase in the number of drug dealers that have moved in downtown as well. The two things that we're doing immediately number one is we've increased the number of visible uniformed police officers in the downtown area. And the second is we're working with the downtown business district in order to be able to provide more outdoor activities, more foot traffic, more access to tables at restaurants. Recently, another restaurant has closed in market square that will be taken over by a bank.

Those types of operations take away from that critical vitality of having people on the streets people on the streets help to lessen crime. Officers help to lessen crime. The other thing we did is we assigned $1.5 million this year in order to create a partnership with Allegheny Health networks, and we have combinations of social workers, working with police officers, so that when we do have people who are struggling with addiction that are homeless or mental health issues, that we're getting them the help they need and not just putting them in handcuffs.

Okay, Jonathan, got two questions here from LA Gordon wants to know, actually, let's just start with this one because this these could take a while. So I think this is pretty interesting here and definitely is a little different. Your thoughts on expanding renewable energy in Pittsburgh to create tons of great jobs in this time when they're really needed? Can we prioritize this as an effort to help us be successful in the new world that we're in

Yes, I can't tell you how much of an issue this is for me personally. So I had been in touch with the folks from the Biden campaign that wrote build back better, and have asked for them to work with a group of mares from upper Appalachia in the Ohio Valley areas that had been built upon and dependent on fossil fuels for our economy. And so the mayors of Huntington, West Virginia, Morgantown, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Ohio, Dayton, Ohio, Columbus, Ohio, Cincinnati, and Louisville, Kentucky. And what we're looking to do is create an American Marshall Plan that focuses on the geographic area of ours in helping to convert our economy away from fossil fuels in into renewable energy by providing grants for companies to locate here and create manufacturing jobs around them. You want to turn a coal miner into an environmentalist with a paycheck in his hands. Instead of the fight between Sierra Club in the United Steelworkers, let's pull them together and create a blue green Alliance. Let's look at it as a transition, because you're doing it as a light switch will absolutely devastate all the communities around us. But if we look at it on the terms of a 15 year plan, we cannot only build out this entire region as the leaders of renewable energy, but provide for generations good paying jobs. And so in order to be able to get that process going, we've engaged with Columbia University in the University of Pittsburgh School of Business, the cat school to provide a report by the middle of October, that engages all of the cities mentioned and their corresponding universities. Marshall in Huntington, West Virginia University, Youngstown State University of Dayton, Ohio State, University of Cincinnati, University of Louisville.

So the role of you know, I love this thing that that cities really and mayors have a huge amount of influence in terms of our future for tomorrow. The federal government does need to step up though, right. There's, there's a heroes act. Can you talk about some of those things? I mean, we're about them.

We're right now in the 48 hour, Hail Mary phase. So again, partnering with an I just got a call from Harrisburg. About this partnering in tomorrow, I think we'll be doing a press conference with Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, three battleground states, but also three states that are still reeling from the dn industrialization of 1980s. And from the post economic great recession of 2008. What would be the effect if we don't have a federal program economically, in these three states and the mayor's from all three states are signing a letter to the president and to our our senators, saying that there will not be an economic recovery in our region without direct federal assistance. And that that's a given I mean, it can be looked at from a number of different ways. But if you allow small and large cities to go bankrupt on a national basis, The economic recovery will take many, many more years than if we have sustaining local government. So much of the COVID response is required by us. So much of the economic burden is being borne by us. And it's national. It's not a city of Pittsburgh issue. It needs national response.
Well, you've also started initiatives and teams and hiring around the issues of equity, diversity inclusion, you pulled a whole bunch of people in to help you with that. Can you talk a little bit about some of those efforts and where how that plays into tomorrow?

Yeah, I mean, this is something that we started years ago. Not it wasn't a reaction to the present situation. Our our Office of Equity is one of only five In the nation, and it is run out of my office in the mayor's office. The Office of Equity has a team around the deals number one with critical communities, you know, veterans, those transitioning out of prison, homeless, suffering addiction, mental health areas where the city hasn't had any active involvement for since the 1920s. And these areas then expand and we look at it systematically across the city. So when we talk about equity, we talk about it as a nation around racial disparity or gender inequality and issues like that, but when we look at it as a city, we look at it streetlights. You know why does do some neighborhoods only have a streetlight at the intersection in other neighborhoods have streetlights on every telephone pole. That is an issue of the line. Light equity. If you start to look at that, and then start tracking back which streets are being paid in, which are just being potholes are being filled, you start to see that in the areas of lower income, both black and white, the amount of resources being used by the city has been very inequitable. So we start to look at it by each department, in each department on an annual basis, has to provide an equity report to our budget office in order to be able to account for their requests for the upcoming year. And we've been doing this now for a couple of years. It's improved not only the accountability within our departments, but we've also seen an increase in minority and women business participation within city government. So what do you what?
What could you say to the tech community in terms of all of us being helpful, like, you know, ask us.

Yeah, I mean, we talked about this the last time as well. And really Now is the time for tech to step up. And I'm not saying that are putting it strictly on the tech industry, it's it's all across the board, all of us need to do more in order to be able to create a better community. And we have to look at the indicators in the data, as the baseline of saying that this is real, and it's not something we can debate that exists or doesn't exist. When childbirth rates within our black community rival third world nations, then we have a real serious problem within the city and we have to be able to address it.

internally. I think tech companies have the opportunity and the responsibility to be able to look at younger people in this country. I talk about the summer earn and learn, but you can do it on your own. You don't have to join the program of being able to mentor them into being able to realize that they too, can be a part of the new economy. For so many of young Pittsburghers, they don't see that. They see a community where new restaurants going in that they're never going to be able to afford. They see new apartments being built in their neighborhood that they'll never be able to live in. And they see this divisiveness between what's happening and where their place will be. And you go 3040 miles out into Fayette County, and you see the same thing. And there's this disconnect between those that are a part of the new economy and those that are being left behind so that that connection needs to happen with the tech community at an earlier age than looking at that CMS graduate, looking at that high school student in Westinghouse, and letting her know that there is a place for her in bakery square office. The second part is being able to contribute directly. And let me just be blunt about that. That means moving into different types of programs that are empowered and created at the neighborhood level. And I've talked to you last time about how I would love to build the combination between tech and youth sports in particular football. Our youth sport programs, should be doing more than trying to find the next quarterback at Brashear High School. We should be finding the next CFO at Mellon bank and we should be doing it in a way that is campuses, the tech community into adopting a team and then adopting those players and being able to provide them with after school learning opportunities and other things, to be able to find those kids and give them the opportunity to see what the future could be for them. So many of these young kids just never walked into an office. Right? And you can visualize it's hard to dream.
And Charley backs has a program Best of the Baptist that's not in the city. It's an homestead, but it's built around basketball and summer programs built about basketball and reading and having access. So that model does work by giving exposure and leveraging sports.

Yeah, we already started a program in lemington it Paulson rec center called rec detech. This we have afterschool programs that are based upon Tech learning. So we're teaching coding. We're teaching kids how to take apart a computer and rebuild it. With electrical engineers, we're working in order to be able to have more than just after school basketball programs. But I got an email from one of the moms in what she said to me is her son is as excited to go to that program as he is to go to football practice. And we're just not giving the kids the opportunity. That's all.
Well, I'm getting you know, we've taken a lot of your time and I got to tell you, you're you're majestic Layne, who were Adam on the show. And I've had conversations with him on the side. And you know what he said? He said, Audrey, you got to make tech Cool. Cool. You want to make it cool. And he looked at me and he said Audra, you're not cool. You got to make it where it is be hip thing to do.

Do you know is a big question. opponent of tech and tech programs for kids, Wiz Khalifa
make it cool, right? So we need to get Wiz back and help us
in bed with an honor student at alderdice. Right? He was he was a nerd. He was into technology and still is.

Right? So we should we need to leverage that. So we have had a chance to talk longer than we typically do. And even though the mayor was only about eight minutes late it we still had more time with him than we do with most guests. So we're going to work on Yes, we're gonna work on getting with maybe whiz can help us with this program of whether it's direct attack or other things. I know you have a lot that you have to attend to. I know you represent us globally. You've been on the news. You have been representing our city, you work with other mayors, and we appreciate that. I know that you get you know, a lot of whips each and every day all day but We care about the issues that you care about.

Well, here's what I would ask them to with. You know, we talked about the idea of putting together a group and looking at Wi Fi, and creating a model for the city that falls within the state laws. A lot of people think that we can do with Chattanooga, we can't, we're not legally allowed. But we do better in putting together expertise from this organization to say, how is it we can, that we can do it, I still want to follow up with where then I'm also going to ask a follow up with you with rec tech. You won't be great if Pittsburgh tech council took on that initiative, we can provide the kids, we can provide the locations, we can provide the tools, but if there were people who were willing to mentor in being able to volunteer some time, to be able to help to get that kid into the path of what they should be. Learning which are the courses they should be taking in order to be able to get into the career of working at our local companies and the unprecedented in this country.
Okay, let's get whiz, we can start.

We have one actually one of my board members is on this call and he's writing me and saying let's do it. So I get it. I want to thank you so much. I take a break, take that tie off. Go sit outside, do something for yourself. shorts. Are you wearing shorts?
No, unfortunately, ah.

Okay, well, I want to thank everyone tomorrow we're actually having this the chief operating officer of sheets, and mer you know that they've opened up a little operations in Pittsburgh, over near bakery squaring innovation. So they are taking advantage of penetrating their presence in Pittsburgh for the talent that's here as well. So we're excited to have him and that's how we're going to wrap the week up. So stay safe. Take a break. All these people care about you that we're on the call and beyond. And we are going to be a great small city. I believe that
Okay, any of the other questions that we didn't get to just pour them over to James and we'll respond individually to the
Great, thank you. Thanks. Awesome.
Talk to you soon, everyone.
 
Transcripted by otter.ai