Ed Gainey, mayor of Pittsburgh, delivered his annual city budget address on Tuesday, Nov. 12. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
On Nov. 12, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey gave his annual budget address on the City budget for 2025. The address was optimistic, with Gainey sharing many of his points of pride.
Gainey said that “the state of the city is strong. For the past three years, my administration has been working hard to rebuild City government as we emerge from the dual crisis of financial distress and the COVID-19 pandemic.”
He described how in 2018, before his tenure as Mayor began, Pittsburgh “exited Act 47 financial distress.” Act 47 is a Pennsylvania debt restructuring program that involved austerity measures, which, according to Gainey, limited Pittsburgh’s ability to provide basic services. He also described the various issues caused by the pandemic, such as a high-vacancy downtown and a resurgence of homelessness after pandemic-era emergency housing funds expired.
Before his administration, Gainey said, the Department of Public Works (DPW), which administers services such as garbage collection and snow removal, was incompetent, had low morale, poor worker safety, and did not promote based upon merit and experience. Gainey’s administration resolved to speak with DPW workers to discern what the issues were.
In the first year, the department decided that they needed to lease 12 new trucks for plowing snow. They also discovered that workers were not allowed to use a sufficient amount of salt, which made their work take longer. Gainey said that under his administration, the DPW has been able to plow everyone’s streets within 24 hours of every snowstorm. He also described how other policy improvements had led to a 51 percent reduction in the rate of DPW worker injuries over the last two years.
Within the DPW, the Bureau of Administration received a budget increase of about four percent, hiring new anti-littering workers. The Bureau of Operations had about a four percent budget decrease. The Bureau of Environmental Services received a four percent increase and the Bureau of Facilities a 30 percent decrease, which mostly comes from a plan to spend less on property services and supplies.
Gainey also described how his administration used American Rescue Plan funds to repair the Fern Hollow Bridge quickly and to repair all other bridges that had been in failing condition, with a “plan to have every bridge in our system in a good state.”
The mayor also described why his administration was increasing the budget for traffic-calming measures by 146 percent, hiring workers to review every serious car accident in the city. In 2025, Pittsburgh will begin automatic red light enforcement, a significant investment with a new position attached, which will be connected to the larger project to coordinate traffic signals across the city to control traffic flow.
Gainey said that due to a high homicide rate and low number of police academy recruits, his administration overhauled the police command, changed how police are assigned locations and times to patrol, negotiated a new police union contract, and changed the criteria by which officers are disciplined and promoted.
The administration also added new civilian workers to deal with administrative tasks and situations “like parking violations, property theft reports, and wellness checks,” saying that next year, he will “double down” on this policy. Homicide rates have decreased since Gainey took office (though they have not declined from their pre-pandemic level). The police budget has been decreased, after having been increased in 2024, bringing it to approximately its 2023 level. Gainey said that the city is working to divert low-level offenders away from jail and into other programs, sending social workers to deal with them.
Under Gainey’s tenure, the Police Academy was reopened after “several years without recruits.” He made it easier to get into the Police Academy, removing the college credit requirement and “removing implicit bias from our psychological screening process” by re-testing candidates who had previously failed their psychological examination. Gainey said that currently, the Academy has 42 recruits, the largest class since reopening. Pittsburgh now also has an EMS academy, which provides a guaranteed job upon completion of the program.
The City of Pittsburgh is finalizing a partnership with the Allegheny County Department of Human Services and is working with this department to open and reopen more homeless shelter beds. Gainey said that “we are moving closer than ever to having a credible offer of shelter to everyone in need.”
Gainey also described changes to the development permitting process, which is only now re-opening in-person permitting services after the pandemic. Gainey also plans on making sure that rental units are being used for their intended purpose, cracking down on unauthorized short-term rentals and group homes.