POLL: 2013 Special Election: City Council District 7

[UKyank]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

It's not rocket science to manage a generally upper-middle-class to affluent community of well-educated individuals that in and of itself is less prone to commit crime or require social/municipal services.

Pittsburgh, on the other hand, is home to census tracts that have six-figure median household incomes as well as census tracts (in some cases walking distance away) that are ravaged by immense poverty. Many more dynamics are in play.

That doesn't by itself however mean that Mccandless leaders wouldn't be able to run the City better.
They may or may not do better, but the situations are totally different & not really comparable is the more fair answer.

Either way one party politics (regardless of party) is boring & stale. Being able to swap between commie ken livingstone & crazy conservative boris johnson was much more fun in London .

In all serious though, lack of viable political competition = generally lackadaisical governance at best & utter corruption at worst. There's plenty of both to go around pittsburgh city politics.

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

It's not rocket science to manage a generally upper-middle-class to affluent community of well-educated individuals that in and of itself is less prone to commit crime or require social/municipal services.

Pittsburgh, on the other hand, is home to census tracts that have six-figure median household incomes as well as census tracts (in some cases walking distance away) that are ravaged by immense poverty. Many more dynamics are in play.

Getting the streets plowed, making sure the garbage is collected, mowing the lawns in the public parks, hiring/managing police, are all jobs which require the same degree of attention regardless of the affluence or education of the population.

In fact, I think that the standards of service that the people expect in a place like McCandless, Hampton or Marshall for essential services would be higher than they are in the city.

[Lobick]

Originally Posted by UKyank

That doesn't by itself however mean that Mccandless leaders wouldn't be able to run the City better.
They may or may not do better, but the situations are totally different & not really comparable is the more fair answer.

But since in Pittsburgh they won't even try, it seems to me far more likely than not that they would do a poorer job. I can't imagine a party unwilling to take on the challenge being better equipped to handle it or having the perseverance to see the challenge through.

Either way one party politics (regardless of party) is boring & stale. Being able to swap between commie ken livingstone & crazy conservative boris johnson was much more fun in London .

In all serious though, lack of viable political competition = generally lackadaisical governance at best & utter corruption at worst. There's plenty of both to go around pittsburgh city politics.

This, of course, is utter nonsense. Simply because two politicians have the same letter after their name doesn't mean that there aren't actual, tangible policy differences, that will make real differences in the lives of the electorate. Anybody paying marginal attention to the Democratic primaries for City Counsel and Mayor over the last several election cycles is familiar with the dynamics. To describe them otherwise is both intellectually dishonest and lazy.

The failure to have more striking choices in urban elections is much more the function of Republicans abandoning urban America than the Democrats marching in lockstep, an appliction of which they have rarely been accused.

[zman63]

Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam

In actuality, there are a growing number of businesses that are located in the outskirts, where rent is cheaper, the zoning officials more flexible, and where they can provide the valuable benefit of free parking to their employees and customers.

Of course, there are still a lot of businesses downtown and a lot that really need to be downtown like law firms who need to be near the courts and the local hoosegow where they can speak to the clients who don't have access to telephones.

But modern telecommunications really makes it so that a lot of businesses can locate anywhere.

Yes but it is nowhere near the amount of what is in the city limits. If the city literally closed downtown the region would be in an economic depression.

Brian O'Neill of the PG wrote an article in 2005, which I am having trouble locating, about how much money is generated in pittsburgh and all of the communities added up don't even equal a third of what the city generates in jobs and money. At the time Monroeville was a distant second to Pittsburgh, most likely due to the presence of westinghouse and their huge shopping districts.

200,000 people come into the city to work everyday. Wouldn't it be nice if those commuters paid the wage tax to where they work instead of where they live? Pittsburgh's finances would look a lot better.

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by zman63

200,000 people come into the city to work everyday. Wouldn't it be nice if those commuters paid the wage tax to where they work instead of where they live? Pittsburgh's finances would look a lot better.

It wouldn't be nice for those who had to pay, and I don't think that the city government's finances would look better at all. City Hall would find a way to spend the "found money", and business would look to accelerate their trend to move to the suburbs -drying up the parking tax and business tax revenues that their presence provides now.

There isn't a "quick fix", setting the city to be "at war" with the suburbs didn't work too well in Detroit, I don't think it would necessarily work out much better here.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam

It wouldn't be nice for those who had to pay, and I don't think that the city government's finances would look better at all. City Hall would find a way to spend the "found money", and business would look to accelerate their trend to move to the suburbs -drying up the parking tax and business tax revenues that their presence provides now.

There isn't a "quick fix", setting the city to be "at war" with the suburbs didn't work too well in Detroit, I don't think it would necessarily work out much better here.

A better example is Philadelphia. Unlike us, they have a pretty hefty commuter tax. As a result, they have one of the worst job to resident ratios in the country, with around 1.4 million residents, and only 600,000 jobs. In contrast, Pittsburgh has an almost one-to-one ratio of jobs to residents.

[UKyank]

Originally Posted by Lobick

But since in Pittsburgh they won't even try, it seems to me far more likely than not that they would do a poorer job. I can't imagine a party unwilling to take on the challenge being better equipped to handle it or having the perseverance to see the challenge through.

I don't see any amount of money being spent in the city on an R candidate making any difference. They run, they just have no chance of winning.

This, of course, is utter nonsense. Simply because two politicians have the same letter after their name doesn't mean that there aren't actual, tangible policy differences, that will make real differences in the lives of the electorate. Anybody paying marginal attention to the Democratic primaries for City Counsel and Mayor over the last several election cycles is familiar with the dynamics. To describe them otherwise is both intellectually dishonest and lazy.

The failure to have more striking choices in urban elections is much more the function of Republicans abandoning urban America than the Democrats marching in lockstep, an appliction of which they have rarely been accused.

As a non-Pittsburgh native, I don't personally see that much difference between the candidates apart from some small policy nuances.
As for the lackadaisical or corruption part, it took the Feds to investigate & expose a large amount of corruption ongoing here just recently, with more to come from it. Until that it was all a good ole boys club with no-one saying a word.

I'll take everyone's assurances that the Peduto regime is somehow fundamentally different then the more of the same that's run the city for years, and hope that my doubt of such is misplaced. Time will tell.

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by Lobick

This, of course, is utter nonsense. Simply because two politicians have the same letter after their name doesn't mean that there aren't actual, tangible policy differences, that will make real differences in the lives of the electorate. Anybody paying marginal attention to the Democratic primaries for City Counsel and Mayor over the last several election cycles is familiar with the dynamics. To describe them otherwise is both intellectually dishonest and lazy.

The failure to have more striking choices in urban elections is much more the function of Republicans abandoning urban America than the Democrats marching in lockstep, an appliction of which they have rarely been accused.

I don't think there were any real policy differences between Mr. Wagner and Mr. Peduto in this past primary season. More of an "issue" of style and a debate on their relative qualifications, where Mr. Wagner represented an older generation, but nothing substantial as far as the way they stood on the issues. Supposedly Wagner is a "social conservative", but his views on the social issues- gun control, abortion, gay marriage- mirrored those of the "social progressive" Peduto almost exactly.

[Copanut]

Originally Posted by zman63

200,000 people come into the city to work everyday. Wouldn't it be nice if those commuters paid the wage tax to where they work instead of where they live? Pittsburgh's finances would look a lot better.

Would they then be able to vote for the Mayor?

Taxation without representation.