-One of the blighted abandoned properties that I reported about, 857 Crucible Street, has now been cleaned up. This is the 1st time in 2 years that anyone has come out to clean the property up. It's about damn time.
-The Pennsylvania State Senate has voted to make it a secondary criminal offense to text on a cell phone while driving. What a waste of time and energy. We all can agree that texting while driving is dangerous but why just single out texting? Isn't eating, changing the radio station, chatting, having people in the car and talking on the phone equally as dangerous? I do not and will not support any measure by our state leaders that prohibit just these single items. Unless you list them all and ban everything that is distracting then it is a complete waste of time. But what else would we expect from our "leaders" in Harrisburg?
-Speaking of Harrisburg, when are we going to get a budget approved? What are these people doing out there?
-The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had a nice front page article on the problems facing municipalities in recruiting volunteer firefighters. Volunteer firefighters currently only receive a sad $100 tax credit each year. This isn't enough. These lifesavers need more incentives to do this unheralded work. It's OK for our state leaders to get their car allowances and per diems but volunteer firefighters who seem to do much more work than our state lawmakers only get a $100 tax credit. Thanks a lot.
-Councilman Bill Peduto's push to make the City of Pittsburgh the most tech-friendly city in the USA is a good one and one that I support. Residents should be able to watch streaming broadcasts of all Council meetings, these meetings should also be achieved and search friendly.
-Rich Lord wrote a wonderful article about discipline problems within the city Public Works Department. "The Post-Gazette found that 137 department employees have faced criminal charges in Allegheny County, some before they joined the city, and some after their hire. Of those, 66 have faced charges within the last 10 years."
I believe that anyone who lied on their job application about being a convicted felon does need to be fired. I understand that these folks may have been worried that admitting their criminal past may have hurt their chances at landing the job. In all reality this shouldn't be an issue because if the city of Pittsburgh was doing a better job in their background checks then these issues would not happen. If applicant A checks that he has not been convicted of a felony then personnel employee A should be able to tell if applicant A is telling the truth or not by a simple background check. Why weren't these background checks completed?
-Former State Senator Vince Fumo was sentenced to 55 months in prison for corruption. Justice is served.
-A big stink occurred in City Council today when Council by a 5-4 vote approved 12 nominees to various Boards within the City of Pittsburgh. The 4 dissenters were Bruce Kraus, Bill Peduto, Patrick Dowd and Doug Shields. Voting yes were Theresa Smith, Darlene Harris, Jim Motznik, Ricky Burgess and Tonya Payne. Unanswered in all this was why certain nominees interview appointments were canceled at the last minute the day before by the City Clerks office. It doesn't seem like enough was done to interview these people for their appointments. Without these nominations being approved the Historic Review Commission would not have the necessary number of members to constitute a quorum.
-An update will come at the end of the week about the numerous 311 complaints that I submitted to the city 311 response system.
-New 311 complaints:
Navajo Way: potholes
Crucible & Lorenz Avenue: faded crosswalk lines
Neidel from South Main to Elbon: potholes
Neidel Street: Trash/debris all along roadway
Ernie Street: people parking their cars in front of fire hydrant
Jack Kelly Sunday
18 hours ago
4 comments:
Um, in reference to the texting law, I do agree that talking on the phone while driving, especially if you are not using a hands free device, is also dangerous (and for me, impossible on the City streets; I drive a stick). But "chatting" and "having people in the car"? You never take your girlfriend in a car anywhere? If you do, you forbid her to talk? C'mon.
At least if you are talking to a passenger, they can tell you you seem distracted, or point out dangers you seem to be missing. It would be the ultimate nanny state if drivers and passengers had to wear a gag as well as a seatbelt.
Speaking of Harrisburg, when are we going to get a budget approved? What are these people doing out there?
--by 'these people' I hope you are referring to the Republicans
The appropriate response to frustrations about how the interviews were postponed would have been to call out the postponement and push for prompt rescheduling. Not to do away with the interviews entirely.
The interviews were scheduled with the clerk by the Mayor. It's not a surprise that a heavy scheduling load, including the oh-so-time-sensitive cable contract discussion, caused it to be bumped. Maybe a better question would be why the Mayor let expired appointments pile up over the last year and then submitted them all in a rush of more than 20.
I think some of the council members fell prey to a whisper campaign -- oh, THEY didn't let you in the loop! THEY did this inappropriately, behind your back! Aren't you mad at them, grr! When nothing that strange at all happened.
Two characterizations in your post about City Council and apparent hijacking of the interview process.
First, regarding the timing of the interview, I believe that your concerns were answered (several times) in the course of the very long council meeting. The interviews were rescheduled so that appointees to the same commission could interview at the same time. Also, three weeks to interview and confirm nominees is a ridiculously short period of time... the application process for most jobs is significantly longer than that. If the five members were really so concerned about the nominees whose appointments were canceled, why didn't they only move to approve those nominees, rather than the whole group? Lost in the midst of all of the heated discussion is the fact that Ms. Watson, the most controversial of all nominees, had not even scheduled a time to be interview yet...
Second, and perhaps more importantly, your assertion the motion by the five councilors was necessitated by the fact that the Historic Review Commission does not have a quorum trends toward fear-mongering. By law, if the term of commissioner or board member expires, he or she will be continue to serve until a replacement is nominated. Thus, the alleged crisis of expired terms jeopardizing the function of these boards is fictitious. Further, the members of the Historic Review Board have been serving on terms that have been expired for between one and four months; on many other commissions, many members have been serving for years in expired terms. The Mayor has had more than two years to appoint members to fill all of the expired terms, yet he has failed to do so. As this week's City Paper points out, having commission members serving on expired terms allows the Mayor to replace them at any time, for any reason as we have seen practiced in recent weeks...
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