Luke Ravensthal/tidbits

:From the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp newsletter in March 2008
Last month, I asked
Pittsburghers to
share what they love
about our great city
as part of a Valentine’s Day Contest.
The impressive number of heartfelt and
sincere responses was inspiring, but not
surprising. As I have said time and
again, Pittsburgh is a city of neighborhoods
and residents. Pittsburghers have
made Pittsburgh all that it is. We must
continue to stay positive, talking about
all of the things that make us proud.
Whether it's our sports teams, our cultural
district, or simply our friendly
people, this is a place to go to school, go
to work, raise your children, and retire.
Pittsburgh has it all.
As we continue to preserve our rich
history and traditions, we are making
changes to ensure that we continue to
grow, attract, and maintain residents
and businesses, and also to create the
cleanest and safest city possible. I want
to keep Pittsburgh a place that you are
proud to call home, and we are taking
proactive measures to ensure that you
can.
Working with the Pittsburgh Bureau
of Police, we have answered the call to
re-establish a proactive police presence
in our neighborhoods. I pledged to reinvest
in the "beat cop" program last year.
The beat cop program is now up and
running. Police Chief Nathan Harper
has assigned four beat cops to each of
the city's six police zones. Zone commanders
will assign the officers to business
districts based on community need
and crime-data analysis.
Public safety is not just about eliminating
crime in a neighborhood. We
must eliminate the blight and abandonment
that encourages and accepts criminal
activity. I doubled the demolition
budget for 2008, and set a goal of bringing
down
many more
structures this
year. We are
taking a new look at an old problem,
changing the way we prioritize demolition
to change the face of our neighborhoods.
My administration held meetings
with the city’s economic development
and public safety departments,
charging them with the arduous task of
overhauling the city’s demolition
process.
The former process was too reactive,
and in order to confront the problem
and to make any real changes, we needed
to be proactive. We have worked
together to find new ways to tackle hazardous,
crime-ridden structures as
quickly and efficiently as possible.
The city’s most dangerous structures
will continue to be torn down as a first
priority, sometimes resulting in scattered
demolition bids. However,
through the revised approach, the city’s
public safety and economic development
bureaus are now working together
to create another layer: geographical
second-tier demo-zones. City taxpayers
will get more for their money when we
designate demolitions in close proximity
to each other, and with the new
process, we will not simply be razing
houses. The remaining vacant lots must
become assets to their communities. We
will be aggressively implementing
greening strategies to create further economic
development opportunities in our
neighborhoods.
As spring approaches, we will continue
to clean up and green up the city. I
ask that you, too, help in our efforts to
proactively address the problems facing
our neighborhoods, so that we can continue
to take pride in Pittsburgh.