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Educational-Space262 t1_jav3qbi wrote

Reply to comment by PGHNeil in What can Philadelphia do as PA’s sole Class 1 city that Pittsburgh PA’s sole Class 2 city can’t? by [deleted]

I don’t know about rural. West Moreland is rural but not a lot of Allegheny County

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PGHNeil t1_jawpigp wrote

As an Allegheny county resident for over 25 years I disagree. The outlying suburban communities have sparser population, more undeveloped areas and a large amount of wildlife. I'm not just talking about the deer problem in Mount Lebanon or reports of coyotes in the county parks but the fact that the further west (Oakdale, Burgetstown) or south (Elizabeth, South Park, Pleasant Hills) you get from the city the sparser the population and generally sparse roadways that are in ill repair Also, consider that more affluent areas like Sewickley or Upper Saint Clair are not going to be willing to defer to an already overburdened city police force.

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69FunnyNumberGuy420 t1_jaxsfpd wrote

Yes, population gets sparser the further you move away from any city in America.

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PGHNeil t1_jaxvvip wrote

Yes, but typically in larger cities that is usually well outside the county line. The city of Philadelphia literally occupies all of its county.

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69FunnyNumberGuy420 t1_jaxw1n5 wrote

You're aware that those lines are arbitrary, right? Allegheny County is over five times the size of Philadelphia county.

 
There is no natural law governing county lines and how much of the county a city should fill.

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PGHNeil t1_jaxxxe5 wrote

It all comes down to money and manpower then. Allegheny county would basically have to absorb the city of Pittsburgh, not the other way around - along with all the outlying townships.

For example, the city has been losing police personnel to the outlying townships. They left for a reason. Even social services are all all county-based. OTOH all the major highways are maintained by the state. The city OTOH struggles to maintain the city streets.

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69FunnyNumberGuy420 t1_jaxzy4d wrote

It's a called a "merger" instead of "annexation" for a reason.
 
The city has ~300K people, the county another 1m outside of city limits. If Pittsburgh were allowed to grow via annexation like any other city, it would have absorbed most of that million people a long time ago.
 
The second class city law of 1901 fucked Pittsburgh over bad and turned this county into a total mess. There is no reason to have 120 or so separate municipalities and 40 different school districts for 1.3m people.

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PGHNeil t1_jay24l6 wrote

Having had to deal with the county regarding behavioral health and various different school districts I agree. There are lots of municipalities that would benefit from this, but I simply don't think that the "merger" would go smoothly. I think a lot of the bigger, more affluent municipalities would fight it tooth and nail because they'd lose their affluence.

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69FunnyNumberGuy420 t1_jay2u9l wrote

Yep, that's the entire problem, every little local mucketymuck wants to keep their fiefdoms.
 
As much as Texas annoys me, they had the right idea with their consolidated school districts and hospital districts.

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