On December 5, 2025, the Pittsburgh City Committee on Intergovernmental and Educational Affairs held a budget hearing featuring the Pittsburgh Parking Authority (PPA) and the Equipment Leasing Authority (ELA). Director McDevitt provided financial overviews for both agencies. Council members engaged with agency leadership regarding parking revenue recovery, enforcement staffing, the controversial implementation of Sunday ticketing, and the critical state of the city's aging vehicle fleet, which requires significantly increased capital investment to avoid service failures.
Pittsburgh Parking Authority (PPA)
Equipment Leasing Authority (ELA) and Fleet Crisis
Hello and welcome to the Pittsburgh City Council budget hearings. I am Councilman Kahari Mosley and I chair the Committee on Intergovernmental and Educational Affairs. For this hearing, we will hear from the Pittsburgh Parking Authority and the Equipment Leasing Authority. We are joined by those from the Pittsburgh Parking Authority at the table. And as we begin this hearing, I ask our budget director, Peter McDevitt, to give a brief overview of the department. Thank you, Councilman. The mission of the public parking authority of Pittsburgh is to provide and maintain affordable, safe, and clean public parking throughout the city of Pittsburgh to uniformly enforce parking ordinances and laws of the city of Pittsburgh and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the collections thereof to advance the economic progress of the region and to do so with the utmost commitment to customer service. The parking authority is responsible for 10 parking garages, one attended parking plaza, the Mond Wharf, uh 7,900 on-street metered parking spaces, 32 surface lots controlling uh 1600 spaces and 33 residential parking program districts. It also oversees the operations of the Pittsburgh Parking Court. And currently, Councilman Wilson is council's representative on the Pittsburgh Parking Authority board. And very quickly, uh we have a number of parking-related revenues in the operating budget. This is for the city as a whole. This isn't just um what we get from the parking authority, but for parking tax, we get just under uh $59.5 million dollars. For meter revenue, we get a little over $9 million, and for parking authority tickets, the city gets uh about eight million dollars. And of that, $26.75 million um parking tax uh is to be allocated towards the pension per section uh 272.01 of city code, and that's all I have for the parking authority. Thank you, Director McDevitt. Thank you, Director McDevitt. Council Carson Warwick is online. And also uh for the record, Councilwoman Barbara Warwick is joined us online. And now uh for the representatives from the Pittsburgh Parking Authority, please introduce yourself and begin your presentation. Thank you, Councilwoman. Um I'm Dave Onorado, executive director of the Pittsburgh Park Authority. Uh and with me is Jody Hart, CFO and Deputy Director of the Parking Authority. Uh as he stated uh uh our mission and went over to the overview. We're in agreement with that. We have uh uh second avenue parking plaza too, it's missing there. But we're uh uh agency uh we uh board passed our budget last uh this month, last week. Uh with that 26th budget, we're anticipating giving the city just under just over 28 million dollars next year through the co-op agreement we have with the city that includes what uh McDivan went through on the parking tax meter revenue and parking court money make up the big share of that. Um that's all we have for I don't have a formal presentation, but we're uh happy to answer any questions absolutely and uh just to note that we're I think one of the only agency that doesn't receive money from the city and we're the ones who fund the city. Thank you. I appreciate that context. Uh Councilwoman Warwick, I'm gonna uh offer you the floor if you have any questions or comments. Um yeah, sure. Apologies. I'm in the car on my way down. But um yeah, could you just give us an update sort of on staffing and um uh you know the ability just to for of the parking authority to do parking enforcement kind of in the you know, because I know that you're trying to staff up uh to to be able to do in addition to metered spots also, you know, because obviously we you know we hear a lot about parking issues in non-metered spots, but you know, between metered spots, the residential parking permit program and uh and then elsewhere, what you know how how how's capacity looking for the parking authority? Uh yes, we're we're uh better off this year coming up in 26 for our enforcement uh uh division. We're besides our officers, which were uh more uh fully staffed to capacity, we're also using automated enforcement to do the RPP districts, and we'll be rolling that off for meter enforcement and eventually uh in 2026. We're hoping to uh uh do automated enforcement for the non-meter areas such as signage, uh no parking and handicap and fire fire hydrants. Oh, okay. Well that's great. That's great to hear. So um, and would there be a possibility too for um and I know this is a little bit nuanced in Pittsburgh, but um for for folks who are parking on the sidewalk. So I know that we have small streets where it's so narrow, right? Like maybe I'm thinking up in like Southside Slopes or wherever it's kind of like there's no choice just given the size of the streets. But we also have places where it's just like egregious unnecessary parking on the sidewalk, sometimes on the curb, sometimes completely on the sidewalk, right? Like the whole car is on the sidewalk. Um is that something that uh you know, and it's it's just it's an issue it comes up a lot, and it it's sort of a lot more than our Bureau of Police can handle. Uh yes, we uh we don't actively enforce that aggressively throughout the city, but we do get the calls concerning that. We informed a complaint that we will enforce it and not only that one vehicle but the entire block because we can't target enforce.