Submitted by PublicCommenter t3_11x56x9 in pittsburgh
revolutionoverdue t1_jd2mogd wrote
I really did give Gainey a chance. And, I think his heart is in the right place. But, at this point I think he’s in over his head. I think a change from peduto was necessary, but we need someone who deeply understands policy, from development to homelessness, to take charge.
James19991 t1_jd2tw0l wrote
I will never understand why this sub was so in love with Gainey two years ago when there was never any evidence he would be better than average at best.
TheLittleParis t1_jd2yo6k wrote
Yeah, I had concerns about Gainey from the beginning since he didn't seem to have much in the way of legislative accomplishments or a detailed policy platform compared to Peduto. I tried to keep an open mind in the first year, but it seems clear now that he just doesn't have an interest in policy or the day-to-day management of city services.
James19991 t1_jd39ycx wrote
I totally agree. He never seemed to particularly excel in Harrisburg or do much above the bare minimum there, so I was always skeptical about him as mayor.
PsuedoRandom90412 t1_jd4167m wrote
I get the feeling the issue is that Gainey spent all his time in Harrisburg as a legislator in the minority party who never really had to "get anything done." Anything he was going to sponsor, talk up, or vote for was at the end of the day either a statement for statements' sake or so totally non-controversial that it would pass the PA legislature with broad bipartisan support. He's great for a soundbite on just about any topic, but...that...doesn't translate at all to "head of an administration that wields actual power and has responsibilities to accomplish things." I think some of that is evident not just in his own actions, but in the folks he has in high positions. (Also great activists who don't have much experience actually being able to execute.)
ktxhopem3276 t1_jd32rzu wrote
Peduto was constantly criticized. He knew the city inside and out and could pull levers to get things done but that always manages to piss off some group of vocal people. It’s a lose lose situation running a city. The best we can hope for is a dialogue and constant refining and improving. We especially shouldn’t jump to conclusions from a poorly written obviously misleading local news story. The fees are still a small percentage of total development cost. We could to study how other cities do this and the news should be giving us comparisons of what the going rate is for these sort of things
dlppgh t1_jd3xjd3 wrote
Um...
- all city mayors are criticized constantly
- Peduto didn't have any particular inside knowledge of the city or of City processes...no more or less than Gainey or Ravenstahl. He retweeted knowledgeable planners and urbanists, but he did so without absorbing much of the content in relation to governing PGH.
- Developers complained bitterly about Peduto, just like all other mayors.
- What levers could/did Peduto pull? Just curious if there are any examples.
ktxhopem3276 t1_jd41q0q wrote
> all city mayors are criticized constantly
that was my point I was attempting to make
Peduto was a city council member for 12 years. He was hands on in the technology departments at the city and worked on updating systems. His downfall was embracing technology when he supported Uber and other automated driving tech. He also wasn’t as tough on UPMC as activists wanted. In retrospect he wasn’t good at keeping bridges in good shaped.
Gainey spent some time in random jobs at the city level and was a state level politician for ten years. I feel like the local news was critical of gainey from the start and hasn’t given him a chance
Ravenstahl was a joke. He grew up in cranberry, went to college in Washington, and was elected to city council less than a year after moving to the city.
dlppgh t1_jd91yr2 wrote
>He was hands on in the technology departments at the city and worked on updating systems.
Um - I worked in that department at the time, I know pretty well what he did and didn't do. I don't think "hands-on" is an accurate description. Among the things he did was express that tech wasn't his forte. What systems are you claiming that he updated? I'll be interested to hear about these.
>Gainey spent some time in random jobs at the city level
Gainey was Ravenstahl's Economic Development Manager.
>Ravenstahl was a joke.
We could have a discussion on Ravenstahl's merits and demerits, there were many of each. I'd like for that discussion to be informed, though...so I'll hold off on that for now.
ktxhopem3276 t1_jd93hap wrote
dlppgh t1_jd946re wrote
So you're referencing a puff piece from 2016 as an example of something Peduto did while he was a Councilman? Maybe not...but I wonder if any of the folks in this thread who have interacted with the inspection and permitting process might have a different take on what has been achieved there?
ktxhopem3276 t1_jd96mdr wrote
What are you even trying to argue about? Here are some more news articles but it’s hard to get go as far back as when he was city council because there are so many more news articles form when he was mayor.
https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/news/2017/06/19/peduto-administration-overhauling-city-s.html
https://pittnews.com/article/22908/archives/councilman-bill-peduto-marches-to-his-own-drumbeat/amp/
https://bikepgh.org/2006/11/28/thank-you-councilman-peduto/
https://www.heinz.cmu.edu/faculty-research/profiles/peduto-william/
dlppgh t1_jd9cqk3 wrote
Oh, cool, a Google Search dump. Does any of that help you add substance to:
>Peduto was a city council member for 12 years. He was hands on in the technology departments at the city and worked on updating systems.
ktxhopem3276 t1_jd9hhwc wrote
dlppgh t1_jdcw86k wrote
LOL! This discussion isn't a personal attack. Just trying to help you understand a bit more.
I worked on both iBurgh and Snow Tracker implementation while in city employ.
iBurgh was a mess - a disaster that Peduto brought to us and demanded we implement. The developers of the app were friends of his. The app wasn't anywhere close to being production ready...and it ultimately was abandoned because the developer just couldn't or wouldn't fix the many issues. Afterwards Peduto blamed the failure on Luke Ravenstahl - which was comical and entirely false.
The Snow Tracker was/is a disaster also. Really, a book should be written to describe that whole fiasco. Among the highlights - corrupt procurement, opacity of DPW, failure of leadership to understand or provide requirements, CYA nonsense, and on and on.
iBurgh happened while he was a councilman. He had no tech role. He did throw a bunch of fits as the project kinda bombed. His main interest was that we beat Boston to the punch in announcing it, he didn't give a rip about whether it worked or what he was demanding in terms of department time/resources to deal with it.
Snow Tracker started the minute he became mayor - fueled by his fear that a snow storm would generate criticism of him, and he should know about that - he usually led the charge against the prior admin when snowflakes fell. He knew exactly how unfair or how difficult that would be to deal with, because he himself had lobbed unfair/difficult criticism over the years. The Snow Tracker was literally all he wanted to talk about in the first few weeks of his administration, and that took a toll on getting a good start with so many other things. He was petulant, childish, difficult. And...the thing still is a mess.
dlppgh t1_jdcylmz wrote
A little more about iBurgh - in this city, to get some tech idea off the ground, all you have to do is find some way to get the letters CMU into the mix, and people are ready to get out of your way reverently. That's a big problem...and no one was a bigger purveyor of this approach than Bill Peduto. In that case, the company "developing" it was a person who had some non-tech affiliation with CMU (a friend/acquaintance of Bill's) and a student who was trying to run an access database on a PC he had literally in his dorm room.
That's not how you build good software, even in the context of how city people want to "pull levers" to do it. Silly...and it's a shame these things are remembered (or Google search-curated) somehow by you and others as successes.
ktxhopem3276 t1_jdd3sk6 wrote
> In that case, the company "developing" it was a person who had some non-tech affiliation with CMU (a friend/acquaintance of Bill's)
No. Priya Narasimhan is a professor with a PhD in computer science
https://www.ece.cmu.edu/directory/bios/narasimhan-priya.html
> and a student who was trying to run an access database on a PC he had literally in his dorm room.
No. We had an office with a rack full of Dell servers and we used Microsoft sql server MySQL. I can’t remember which we used on iBurgh. The memory that sticks in my mind vividly is the city used an old version of the database software and wouldn’t let us use a newer version.
You have some misunderstandings about the that project and exhibit the same condescending attitude I remember the city employees had at the time.
I don’t think CMU deserves the bad reputation some people have about them. I think politicians use the school to get publicity. The panther hollow project was goofy and I don’t think the school even wanted it as much as Bill did. But I also think the outrage against that project was simple NIMBYs and opportunistic activists riding on the hate toward Upmc which is a much bigger problem with abusing their nonprofit status, low pay and poor working conditions
dlppgh t1_jdd7tk0 wrote
OK, thanks for correcting on Priya. However, I don't say that a prof in CS necessarily knows a thing about application development just because they hold a CS credential, and in this case, that really proved out. You're saying that she didn't do well managing the project because it was difficult and "not worth the trouble"...boy, I don't think that's a shining endorsement, and I think it's an admission of why the thing failed, really.
My characterization of a student with an access DB in his dorm room - truthfully, literally - was how Priya described your side of things when things didn't move along as they should have. So, thanks for correcting, but...
I think you probably had some difficulty working through networking and firewall stuff. I can back you up there - the city at the time was embarrassingly deficient in Network Admins, but...I'm not even sure why they had the role they did in the plan. There was no reason for user-submitted data to even enter the city firewall, I remember making that point. At very least, on your side you could have stood up a prototype that proved out your concept and feature development. Getting hung up on networking...not something that should have happened.
Maybe you know better now - building software can be difficult, and when you face issues, you have to take ownership, stay focused, keep pressing and finding creative solutions. What you can't do is just recede, talk crap about your own team behind their backs, shift blame to others. But, maybe not...
ktxhopem3276 t1_jdd8koj wrote
You are arrogant and have no self awareness of how condescending you come across
dlppgh t1_jddaj5s wrote
Thanks for the evaluation, I'll file it away...and I'll keep my evaluation of you to myself. But I'm not seeing any substantive responses to the points I've made...telling...
dlppgh t1_jdd99l5 wrote
>I don’t think CMU deserves the bad reputation some people have about them.
My point is that this "reputation" gets thrown around when someone wants to lend power to their amateurish software projects, and in many cases, that works for them. Without question, CMU has some of the best people in the world doing things...and they have others. Nothing monolithic - either good or bad - should be assumed when the CMU letters get tossed in, but that mistake is often made. I hope you understand that point better.
ktxhopem3276 t1_jdd9jcx wrote
> Nothing monolithic - either good or bad
That’s just a basic fact about any org
>I hope you understand that point better.
condescending
dlppgh t1_jddcr6e wrote
...you're kinda thin-skinned, aren't you? Not difficult to see why you'd have some trouble guiding a software project to completion.
ktxhopem3276 t1_jddhktf wrote
Bill asked us to do a favor to give back to the city while we had plenty of paying customers we could have been working on instead. Priya runs software for many major league sports teams and does well at it.
>Just trying to help you understand it
> i hope you understand that point better
Your just assuming you know best and have to explain it to me like I’m a child … buzz off
dlppgh t1_jddr91u wrote
Here's the problem. At that point, Bill Peduto was a City Councilman. He came at the CIS department not from a position of authority - in fact he did his best NOT to work with the administration chain of command. A "favor" to Bill - and him berating our Director - was outside of our workflow.
To emphasize - a "favor" to Bill Peduto involving a department and a team of employees that don't report to him isn't a valid workflow. We ALSO had important projects that our actual bosses tasked us with.
A software project done as a "favor" - that's typical of Peduto's leadership shortcomings. He was lucky that our Director even gave him the time of day, but he did...and that sort of thing didn't go over well in his chain of command.
I wonder how far "favor" software projects flung over by councilpeople got when Bill became mayor. Probably not far. Sadly, his leadership shortcomings only became more pronounced.
If Priya had paying customers that got back-burnered for this "favor"...yeesh, what a debacle. What an operational miasma. Those customers must have wondered what they were paying for. Maybe after paying the company, they also needed to ask Peduto for a favor, eh?
Silly nonsense.
dlppgh t1_jddc9u9 wrote
>I also think the outrage against that project was simple NIMBYs and opportunistic activists riding on the hate toward Upmc
Dude, they were residents of the Run...people who lived there. You're eager to call other people "condescending", but wow, dismissing their concerns in this way is just insulting and thick-headed.
ktxhopem3276 t1_jddg5nl wrote
> Dude, they were residents of the Run...people who lived there.
The people living there wanted the money to go to their problems instead. Their houses are built on a drainage channel and will never stop flooding. It didn’t seem to me like they made any compelling arguments about how the MOC would negatively affect them besides spend the money on bailing out their basements instead. There are two sides to every project and also a lot of shill involved so everyone has to think for themselves about who is telling the truth and who isn’t. There was a pile on affect of every activist in the city jumping in to hate on upmc and cmu and they took advantage of the local residents to get their chance in the limelight. The project was probably a waste of money and I don’t think cmu or anyone with influence really cared about it anyway. But I think it was more about using the schools as a punching bag than it was about actually helping the run. Now that the project is canceled, the activists have moved on to other nonprofit bashing efforts while the run is still in the same shit condition and always will be because saline street should be a stream instead of a street
dlppgh t1_jddrsmc wrote
>It didn’t seem to me like they made any compelling arguments about how the MOC would negatively affect them besides spend the money on bailing out their basements instead.
I'm not touching this mess, other than to say that you've done an awful job understanding their concerns. I'm certainly happy to note that your conception of the concerns wasn't relevant in how that whole thing went down.
ktxhopem3276 t1_jddux2a wrote
The residents of the run have been insufferable and have shit on anything and everything as PWSA attempts to improve drainage in their neighborhood. It’s been clear for a while now that they expect special treatment and a bailout because they chose to live in a drainage ditch
> “It doesn’t do enough given the severity and the frequency of flooding,” he said, referencing PWSA’s presentation that showed projected reductions in 10-year floods. “[Flooding is] going to increase with climate change and out of control development.”
> The project’s manager Tony Igwe said there will be reductions at other levels, too, but that no city in the country has built infrastructure to withstand 75-year flood levels. He added that PWSA is constrained by what the agency’s ratepayers can afford.
> “Whatever we provide for Four Mile Run we have to provide for the rest of the system,” he said, adding that part of their approach in planning is to create infrastructure that can adjust to future realities. “But we have to pick something that people can actually afford.”
dlppgh t1_jde7ydt wrote
You've got it backwards. No one in The Run objects to necessary storm infrastructure improvements. They object to them being paired with a silly, inadequate, poorly planned and extremely unpopular autonomous project.
ktxhopem3276 t1_jdelufu wrote
They only care about themselves. They are mad that PWSA won’t spend more money on them. $36 million is $500,000 per house in the run. They think PWSA has some sort of obligation to make up for the fact that their houses are in the worst possible location for flooding. Blocking the MOC was simply because they wanted every last cent to go toward them.
As I said before, the MOC project was mediocre. My point is the conspiracy around cmu being a power broker trying to screw over people is exaggerated. Cmu has put a lot of effort into storm water management on campus with green roofs rain gardens and underground cisterns. If you are looking for an evil non profit go look at upmc.
Peduto was never shy about proposing audacious projects and some were good and some were bad but at least he had is heart in it and I got no impression he was just doing it for special interest groups. But activists couldn’t stand that he wasn’t a flame thrower directed at every for profit and non profit business in the city.
Meanwhile, during snowmageddon, ravenstahl was hiding out in seven springs and spent days refusing to tell the public where he was bc he was staying in the condo of one of the largest real estate developers in the county. somebody in hazlewood died because an ambulance couldn’t get through the unplowed streets. I met ravenstahl once while he was at a penguins game in the box suite of the law firm representing burns and scalo. Ravenstahl never saw a corporate handout he couldn’t refuse like the $9000 sponsorship from upmc for a golf tournament.
I don’t know if gainey will be a better mayor but it’s not like peduto was unpopular. He lost to gainey 26,000 to 22,000 in a city of 300,000 people. Which is impressive that peduto managed to last as long as he did. He wasn’t afraid to take risks like when he pushed for removing parking from schenly plaza and added bike lanes and round abouts. These sort of changes drive reactionary people crazy even though they were the right way to go. He lasted 20 years in city politics so in my mind he deserves a pat on the back. Gainey is quickly finding out how hard and intense the criticism is when you are mayor versus just a state legislator.
dlppgh t1_jdepghy wrote
>somebody in hazlewood died because an ambulance couldn’t get through the unplowed streets.
I was in the City County Building that day. Ravenstahl was heavily affected by that and he had a meeting with Public Safety officials in which he was losing it - loudly screaming. It's not fair or accurate to say that this wasn't on Luke's radar. You don't have to tell me or anyone else who worked for the city at that time about it.
I spent about a month's work of work focused specifically on Snowmageddon. I can tell you more about how it affected the city organization than you probably want to hear.
That much snow would have paralyzed the city no matter who the mayor was. Yes, Luke was in Seven Springs, but that's irrelevant. Snow removal operations are/were the specific task of a specific manager in DPW. And guess what - that manager during snowmageddon was the same manager tasked with the same responsibility until he retired during the Peduto admin.
Any changes that took place after snowmageddon started taking place immediately in 2010. They weren't appreciably improved under Peduto. The snow tracker was NOTHING except a costly CYA move that did absolutely nothing to improve snow response times or efficiency.
I have a few things I credit Peduto for...but he also earned my disrespect. He worked hard at it and he finally broke me.
I am going to politely tell you that Googling up a few stories in 2023 isn't an adequate replacement for knowing what you're talking about.
ktxhopem3276 t1_jdeqjjb wrote
> Yes, Luke was in Seven Springs, but that's irrelevant.
You don’t leave town to have a birthday party with a wealthy developer at his ski condo while the city is facing the worst snow storm in decades.
> I have a few things I credit Peduto for...but he also earned my disrespect. He worked hard at it and he finally broke me. I am going to politely tell you that Googling up a few stories in 2023 isn't an adequate replacement for knowing what you're talking about.
You are so special and have earned the privilege to talk down to everyone that isn’t a government employee.
dlppgh t1_jdje390 wrote
You can weep about my tone all you want, but I don't see you addressing substance even for a moment.
For the record - seeing you lambaste residents of The Run for daring to care about their community, and then trading in silly childish whining about my condescension...is uniquely goofy.
If someone actually condescends in their tone to you, you'll have earned it many times over.
ktxhopem3276 t1_jdjip4q wrote
You’ve been attacking me for days because I said something positive about peduto. Most people have some pent up emotions about their boss. You might need therapy if hearing something positive about your former boss is so upsetting.
They are entitled to care about their community and voice their concerns. But it’s fair to be on the lookout for selfish nimby opposition to a project. The neighborhood people were being ignored and only got attention when people saw the opportunity to dunk on a large nonprofit and the mayor.
dlppgh t1_jdds0oy wrote
>Now that the project is canceled, the activists have moved on to other nonprofit bashing efforts while the run is still in the same shit condition and always will be because saline street should be a stream instead of a street
just...wow...
I wish you a good day, and lotsa luck.
ktxhopem3276 t1_jdcysc5 wrote
Could have fooled me with your condescending attitude. I wrote the iburgh software while a student at cmu. The city tech department obviously had no interest in the project being a success. The outdated software stack they insisted on us interfacing with was a major issue. The professor at cmu in charge of the project had no experience working with government contracting and was in over her head but what she learned was government contracting is just not worth the trouble in most cases. She focused more on the sports apps for the penguins at the time bc the team was just more interested in trying new things. Clearly you just don’t like Peduto bc he dared to try to push the city to change its outdated ways. This is the problem every mayor faces when they get into office. Every department is a fiefdom and resist any change.
dlppgh t1_jdd16bk wrote
Wow, ok. I have to say, the software stack you introduced left a lot to be desired. The team you briefly interacted with at the city definitely wanted to work with you and did so when given that opportunity. But the person on your side who need to manage the project just didn't do anything except shift blame around - blaming you a good portion of the time, you should know.
Yes, there are a fair amount of obstacles for things like networking and firewalls when it comes to working with the city, but even setting those things aside, you guys had considerable difficulty fixing your bugs or collecting feature requests or just with implementation in general. Blaming that on the city is goofy. You guys weren't the right team to be doing that project, which is why it sunk.
As for me "not liking" Peduto because he was progressive and spoke about fixing problems and reform...also silly. I liked him for exactly those reasons, and I supported these ideas until it was clear that he really had no ability to take any of it past talk. I only "disliked" him when he started handing out blame and making excuses and retreating from the stuff he said he'd work on. I worked for 7 years trying to "push the city to change its outdated ways", I didn't just yap about it.
higmy6 t1_jd2xse1 wrote
I mean I just didn’t want Moreno or whatever his name was
James19991 t1_jd3a57x wrote
Yeah Moreno would have been way worse than Gainey, but Gainey still wasn't an upgrade from Peduto either.
revolutionoverdue t1_jd2v3t8 wrote
Same reason I’m hopeful that the Bucs can compete each year in spring training.
ktxhopem3276 t1_jd326x2 wrote
City mayors are put into a circular firing squad on day one. Few people want that job. We have to try to work with what we have instead of constantly whining about every little issue stoked by local news
revolutionoverdue t1_jd33blo wrote
I agree to an extent. I’ve actually had face to face meetings with Mayor Gainey about issues effecting my neighborhood. Something I could never get with mayor peduto. Like I said, I do think his heart is in the right place. And, if nothing else he has breathed some fresh air into the city county building. But, I don’t know if his trusted advisors have a strong grip on policy.
I get it, it’s easy for me to complain from the sidelines. And, you’re never going to please all of the people. I just had higher hopes.
My city council person is light years ahead of their predecessor. So, we’ve got that going for us.
YIMBYYay t1_jd2nncz wrote
The Planning Department is staffed by holdovers from the Peduto Administration. They have been implementing bad NIMBY, anti-development and anti housing policies for years. This is just getting press because it’s the most egregious.
I work as a designer in a firm with multiple offices and really got interested in the YIMBY movement after experiencing how awful and damaging zoning is in Pittsburgh compared to other cities where I was working.
revolutionoverdue t1_jd2pdey wrote
I agree. I’m a small local neighborhood developer and it’s really hard for small time developers without lawyers and project managers on staff to navigate and afford the process. In my opinion it pushes local developers away. Building or renovating a 4 unit mixed use project in milvale or dormont or etna is soooo much easier than city of PGH.
Dancing_Hitchhiker t1_jd2ru5c wrote
I’ve heard the same, basically makes it so time consuming it makes people give up on projects
RepeatedFailure t1_jd3pc2o wrote
It probably causes a regulatory capture that favors larger developers who cut their teeth on suburban projects, and then bring their strip mall design process to the city. Sucks man.
Hoppiness83 t1_jd3nt0s wrote
You're 100% correct.
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