Councilperson Deb Gross is working on this, but I don’t think she gets a ton of support from many other members of council. I know she’s supported food forest initiatives in her district though and Morningside definitely got some fruit trees at one point to expand their community garden.

You should talk to your councilperson. City owns a lot of land it’s currently doing nothing with.

Yeah for sure. I can’t speak for the grand jury process, but from my jury experience, I agree that the things the court considers hardships are much different than what the average person would consider a hardship.

They should absolutely offer childcare and pay people more if they want to make it easier for all types of folks to serve on juries.

Whistleblower Pittsburgh cop resigns without explanation

“For trying to protect the public from wrongdoing as she has done throughout her 28-year distinguished career as a decorated City of Pittsburgh police officer, Catherine McNeilly has been retaliated against, publicly punished, humiliated and demoted from the City’s senior police Commander to the rank of lieutenant,” said Timothy P. O’Brien, an ACLU cooperating attorney and lead counsel in the case.

Pittsburgh police officer said rape allegations she made were pushed aside

Ohhhhh ok. Great idea. I’ll get right on that.

LAPD officer killed during training exercise by cops he was investigating for sexual assault: attorney

Explain my reasoning to someone who is ignoring most of what I’m saying and has basically admitted in this last comment they’re debating in bad faith?

Oh boy what a fantastic opportunity how could I pass that up

lmao ok, so this is a “I’m just asking questions” situation. Forget it.

I just saw your flare. Maybe you’ve missed most of the news about this over the years because you don’t live in the city?

And your opinion that we do need this facility is based on. . .what analysis exactly? The cops saying we need it?

The vast majority of the savings the city claimed they were getting when this project was first proposed were from consolidating all public safety services and the public works facility in The Strip. Those savings are now gone, because those departments are no longer included in the plan.

There are existing plans to enclose the shooting range that don’t involve spending $120 mil on a whole new facility. The cops have also been offered the use of the North Park shooting range owned by the count, but they refuse to use it. So if this were really about solving that problem, we could have done it years ago.

Oh, hello again. You know this thread doesn’t have anything to do with John Fetterman right?

It’s a state of the art, top of the line facility they have no pressing need for, so I’d say the comparison to a resort is pretty apt.

I love that you bring up cost overruns and inflation, when my entire comment was about how this facility is not needed. We can easily avoid the inflation on this project by not building it. Would much rather deal with ballooning costs on projects that will actually positively impact the residents of this city directly.

> Former Pittsburgh mayor Bill Peduto initially proposed relocating police and emergency services headquarters, the police training academy, animal control, and the city’s vehicle repair shop to the Lincoln-Lemington site. Current Mayor Ed Gainey’s spokesperson Maria Montaño tells City Paper the scope of the project has since narrowed to focus on police training facilities, and that, despite the reduction in scope, the estimated cost of the project remains over $120 million.

When this project was first proposed, it was going to cost $90 million dollars and Dan Gilman said part of the money would come back to the city by getting rid of expensive leases held by the city to store large vehicles and house other departments.

So now, let me get this right. . .the project has increased its cost by $30 million AND now won’t be a facility for other departments as originally promised? We’re building a $120 million Nemacolin for cops when the city can’t fix our bridges or fill potholes?

Fuck all of this shit. This kind of nonsense is why our taxes are so high and we get nothing in return. If the other city services don’t need to be consolidated and can be jettisoned from this plan, then the police don’t need a shining murder mansion on the hill just for them.

No, Coghill dumbed down topography to “we have hills”. And no one is arguing that the idea the city is hilly alone is ridiculous, but it was a ridiculous thing to say in the context of that conversation. Especially because the only thing council was seriously considering at the time was diverting a measly $5 million out of the police budget and zero officer cuts.

I think it’s pretty easy to understand that even if we cut our police force by half, you still wouldn’t have to have a car from Shadyside respond to calls in the South Hills. So, for Coghill to use the topography of the city during the debate around police funding where we were never in danger of having so few officers the hills would become an issue was a strawman.

You’re in luck because you won’t have to wait (at least due to the topography). The hills might be an issue if we only had 20 cops for the whole city, but boy, do we have a lot more than that!

We have so many cops for a city our size. To give some context, we have about 30 police officers per 10,000 residents. Other cities around our size: Indianapolis has 18, El Paso 14, Nashville 20. We spend $1 out of every $5 in the city budget juston the police.

We have plenty of police officers and they’re spread out throughout the city, which would still be the case even if we hired fewer of them, gave them less fancy military gear, and held them accountable.

So, yes, it was a very dumb thing to say.

During the discussions around policing in 2020, he said that Pittsburgh needed a lot of cops because we have so many hills. I can’t find his exact quote right now, but it was so fucking stupid. He also advocated for more police because of the Steelers?????

This City Paper elections guide mentions it though:

“Policing: Has defended need for increased police presence. In December 2020, expressed concern about a vote to divert $5.3 million from the police to fund the new Stop the Violence initiative, reportedly citing local sporting events and the city’s hilly terrain as justifications for more policing.”

Tactical stilts

I think insurance will be a challenge. Expensive, complicated, or both.

I also see you mention having a cafe and animals. I wouldn’t count on being able to serve food or drinks if animals are present because of our county health code. I know some of the cat cafes had issues and had to go to extreme lengths to have animals and food in the same-ish space.

Also, I’d keep in mind that pittsburgh has a relatively small population, so many niche businesses don’t find it easy to survive here. That being said, there is a bunny cafe in the works and they’re having trouble getting it going, partially because there is little demand for it.

Oh Mr. We Need More Cops Because The City Has A Lot Of Hills?

No thanks.

I don’t know a ton about the area, but I can tell you that I have big regrets about buying a starter home in a neighborhood I didn’t love because it was what I could afford at the time.

In hindsight, really should have continued to rent until I had more of a down payment and could have bought something else. You never know what’s going to happen. Nothing wrong with a starter home, but buying a house is a big investment and it’s a decision that can be hard to change. Just keep that in mind. You don’t want to buy something unless you’d be ok with living there longer than you anticipate.

Current variants of Covid are not always showing up on rapid tests until about day 5+ of symptoms. I would try and get a PCR test if you can, or take serial rapid tests over the next few days swabbing your nose, then throat.

It’s not a thing here, even though that type of cleaning is easy to find in other places. You ask people about it here and they look at you like you have two heads.

That place in Allison Park was the only one I knew of and it’s gone. I think at this point, you either have to shell out for the detail or do it yourself unfortunately.

I’m guessing the person who told you that meant there are no traditional push cart dim sum places here, which is correct.

There are some restaurants that serve dim sum though. Parlor was already mentioned and this thread talks about the other options.

According to the post, it could be a temp hiatus or permanent. They’re not sure yet.

Yeah, I think the other thing people forget too is how small Pittsburgh is compared to other places. The population of Austin proper is close to 1m people. We only have about 300k in the city here (greater metro area doesn’t exactly drive the arts). They don’t realize that our options are functionally limited because we don’t have a lot of people.

You’d struggle to find live music here that you want to listen to every night of the week. In Austin, that’d be very easy.

Oh that’s awesome. I only go to eat there once, but it was very good. Excited it’s coming back.

That’s more than most of my friends in LA and SF pay, but hey can you really put a price on being within walking distance of Stinky’s and Busy Beaver