12/29/2017
It has been a pleasure and a privilege serving you these past eight years. Eight years ago, I was elected to represent the residents of City Council District 4 and to bring much needed attention to our South Pittsburgh neighborhoods. Together, we have developed main streets, implemented major public works projects, expanded educational opportunities, leveled the playing field for women and girls, and ultimately, changed the way this city does business. Now, it is time to move on.
This page will no longer be active after today. If you would like to follow District 4 updates in the future, please search Facebook for your new City Councilperson Anthony Coghill in the coming weeks.
Please follow my personal page at https://m.facebook.com/NataliaRudiakpublic for more updates on my continued work in the community and city-at-large!
I'd also like to thank the staff members this office has had along the way: John Fournier, Judy Hale Reed, Alex Pazuchanics, Adam Shuck, and Dan Barrett. And especially the crew we've had for the past few years: my fearless Chief of Staff Ashleigh Deemer, passionate Communications Manager Bethani Cameron, and meticulous Constituent Services Megan Neuf. Together we've solved thousands of constituent concerns and written dozens of pieces of legislation and budgeted hundreds of millions of dollars. Thank you all!
Below are my final remarks as City Council Finance and Law Committee Chair at our last meeting yesterday morning. Thank you again for allowing me the amazing opportunity to serve you. I look forward to seeing our city’s continued positive transformation and growth.
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Finance Chair, Budget Address
December 28, 2017
First I would like to say that it has been an honor and privilege to serve as Council’s finance chair under President Kraus’ leadership over the past 4 years as well as to serve with each member of Council, the City Administration and district 4 residents over the past eight.
This years’ $554 million dollar Operating Budget expenditure plan and $104 Million Dollar capital budget puts the City on a solid footing as we exit the Act 47 distressed status. The 5-year plan as currently stated invests an unprecedented $356 Million in City operating and bond funds and hundreds of millions more in match federal and private sources. At the same time the Council, through the stalwart advocacy of Councilmen Lavelle and Burgess, and compromise forged by Councilman O'Connor, Council has committed $10 Million a year to address affordable housing and thanks to the Women's Caucus, we have set aside $2 Million to be matched from other public and private sources to raise the quality of childcare throughout the City.
The 5 year plan also makes an unprecedented commitment to our City’s pension by moving to a pay as you go by putting more into the pension than the benefits paid out without considering investment return. This will allow the principal and investment return to grow. If this is continued for 10 years the pension could be more than 80% funded and out of distressed status by 2028.
But none of this happened overnight. In 2010, Councilmember Burgess and I created the City’s Neighborhood First Capital Budget Reform Act, in which we instituted a much more transparent Capital budget process, transitioning from a wish list of unfunded promises to projects emanating from the community and a list of Mayoral priorities. As your Finance chair, we came back and amended the legislation in 2015 to clean up most of the unfunded projects and create a positive balance in the Capital fund, while maintaining the integrity of the legislative process.
We began early in 2014 to form a collaborative effort with the Mayor to work to improve the not only finances of the City but to also bring about systemic change.
In 2016, we developed a gift acceptance policy to perform proper accounting and ethical accountability for the City when the City receives corporate and personal gifts.
Together, we amended the rules on purchasing by allowing an expansion of cost effective options for the city while maintaining accountability.
We also codified some the best practices from Act 47 through Ordinance 19, by having City Council vote on a 5 year plan and requiring a commitment on Pension funding that exceeds state requirements. I am proud to have worked with our Council Budget office as well as the Mayoral administration to further amend Ordinance 19 in the past month to include a tightened budget process and a pay as you go pension.
With Councilmembers Kraus, O'Connor, and Kail-Smith, we embarked on a two-year process to clean up the rules of Council, which hadn't been changed since the 1980s, to provide more order in our meetings and a more functional process to guide our actions. Now, anyone can pick up the Rules Book and understand how our City Council functions.
Also as your Finance Chair, together we worked on and approved the last 4 balanced budgets and 5 year plans of the City that have resulted in changing the City’s financial position from one of fiscal uncertainty to one that not only gives us a stronger outlook, but one that also addresses the future for our children and low and moderate income families.
Over the years, in conjunction with Councilwoman Harris's advocacy for sound cash management policies, and with efforts by the mayoral administration, we are seeing increased availability for taxpayers to use credit cards across departments and functions. On that note, in terms of city financial infrastructure, Councilman Gilman was instrumental in passing a fee study to make sure all the city's fees for services were transparent to City taxpayers.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention Council's collective efforts to keep our parking assets public. We pushed hard to have an independent voice in that difficult time, and it was one of my proudest moments on Council to work with you all and the City Controller to forge the agreement with the state to use our parking tax and assets to increase our hard-working employees' pensions.
Through the work of the Women's Caucus and especially Councilwoman Gross, we have opened up the finances of the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, and demanded accountability for this authority's billing and core functions, including water quality, stormwater, and public health.
A few years ago you all also helped me pass Opengov, the City’s first software to open up the City’s finances to ordinary citizens. Our residents now have a right to see how we are spending their money. By giving them access to much of the same information we have, in an easy to understand visual format, they can gain insight into the decision making process of how we allocate those funds.
Also during this time, Councilman Kraus has led the way for neighborhoods to be healthy, clean, and green while supporting a sustainable nighttime economy. This council made the tough decision to support increased enforcement to generate revenue for the enhanced parking district, creating an innovative source of revenue and a model for other neighborhoods to follow.
And thanks to the Women's Caucus, including Councilwomen Harris, Gross, and Kail-Smith, with the support of all of council, we have seen an unprecedented investment of Early Childhood Initiatives in this City. Why? Because we know that hundreds of children, including low-income children, are placed on waiting lists each year in Pittsburgh, simply because their families cannot afford high-quality early childhood programs. We know that at-risk children who don’t receive a high-quality early-childhood education are 25 percent more likely to drop out of school, 50 percent more likely to be placed in special education, 60 percent more likely to never attend college and 70 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime. For every $1 we invest in Pre-K, we can see as much as $17 in savings and economic benefits. Thanks to this Council, we have seen the City hire our first Early Childhood manager, put together a task force to find a path to implementation of universal early childhood education, and fund the increase of quality of programs through the city. It will be up to this Council to also find a reliable funding source to close the gaps for families seeking to access affordable, high-quality early childhood education in years to come.
One issue that has not been raised collectively by this Council, one that has consumed the work of my office over the past year, one that I would urge this council to look at more critically is: opioid use and overdose. Some may say that this is a state issue. A County issue. A public health issue. And not a City issue. But in 2016, our first responders administered 1400 naloxone doses. That means that EMS potentially saved 1400 lives. This is once every 6.5 hours. Some of our neighborhoods barely have 1400 people. Think about that. Our first responders deserve our thanks, which they do not hear often enough. So let me take this opportunity to say: thank you.
In my district I have formed the South Pittsburgh Opioid Action Coalition- also known as SPOAC - a group of citizens, educators, law enforcement officials, faith-based and business leaders to come together to end overdose in our southern neighborhoods. To date, we have held a community resource event where active addicts and their families came for help, and we have applied for a state grant to form teams to connect with individuals who overdose in the days after the event to connect them with a range of services, including treatment, needle exchange, primary care, and other needed social services. We are doing everything to create a culture of compassion in our communities. But make no mistake: overdose is now the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50 and this opioid epidemic is taking a toll on our fatigued first responders, and it affects every sector of city living, from crime to quality of life. We as a city and a council need to do more to leverage county, state, and federal resources to ease the burden on the families and first responders we represent.
The affordable housing trust fund has been successful funded through a hyrbrid model of a raising of the real estate transfer tax as well as a clean up of old trust funds and other monies in the City budget. Councilmembers Gilman and Kail-Smith introduced legislation calling on various entities to help long-time homeowners with their real estate taxes, and improve quality of life. As Finance Chair and the representative of a district where affordable home ownership is the prime path to neighborhood stabilization, I applaud these efforts. As your outgoing Finance Chair, may I suggest to the Council that in 2 years time, as the next level of the transfer tax increase looms, an objective analysis be done to show what the impact of the .5 increase has been affordable home sales in this city. I say this not to be adversarial, but responsible. We know that currently over 6,000 transfers, or 74% of the total purchasers affected by this tax are for properties under $150,000. We as city residents and leaders will need to have a conversation about what quality of life in our neighborhoods will look like if home sales do in fact decrease as a result of this tax increase, and what we're going to do about it.
On that note, City Council has the deep responsibility to protect our quality of life *and* our city taxpayers by ensuring that the City collects revenue that may already be on the table.
Five years ago, in 2012, Council passed legislation to create Market Based Revenue Opportunities (MBRO), ie. advertising that could bring in money for the City. As Finance chair, I have arranged at least 3 meetings with finance, city planning, zoning administrators, law department, etc. to figure out a plan of implementation. Unfortunately, we haven't gotten a lot of action. Although RFPs have been issued, to my knowledge, the administration has not implemented any MBRO initiatives. It will up to future Councils to make sure that the City isn't leaving money on the table.
There is also the billboard tax that Councilwoman Harris and I passed, again, five years ago, in 2012. The tax was expected to raise $2-4 million annually. Since it is a tax on proceeds, that number has surely gone up over time. Lamar, the City’s biggest billboard advertising company, sued the City. At our budget hearings, we were told that after 5 years in litigation, this issue is finally going to court in March. Again, it will be up to future Councils to make sure that future administrations don't leave this money on the table.
Lastly, there is the agreement with the City’s largest mega non-profits, such as UPMC, Highmark, and universities. Since 1989, we've averaged $3.5 million a year in a payment in lieu of taxes agreement. However the last payment we received was from 2013. In the meantime, UPMC has announced billions of dollars in investment in property that will take more land off the tax rolls and provide more low pay, low benefit jobs that cause working families to rely on public subsidy for everything from food to child care, and ironically, health care. We need a PILOT agreement as soon as possible. It will up to future Councils to make sure that future administrations don't continue to leave this money on the table.
It has been a pleasure serving this City and my district for the past 8 years. I know we have not always agreed on every issue, and in fact, it is all but be assured that I have voted the opposite of each of you on a variety of legislation.
As representatives of very diverse constituencies, we elected officials are literally elected to confront shared social situations that involve competing interests. At its extreme, and in the absence of better methods of social change, this conflict over values can be violent. But I am thankful that we live in a society, where, Dick Gephardt – Congressman and Majority Leader from Missouri, once said, “Politics is our substitute for violence.”
I am grateful that the political system in which we live is set up to clarify these differences in a peaceful way and narrow the gap between what we have and what we want. And through this peaceful process, democracy thrives. I am grateful and blessed to have played a small part in this big democracy.
I know that this City Council will face more tough decisions in the future, and I know that after working with all, you will have the integrity and grit to face them. Thank you for your continued service, all. Thank you.
