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.

Uh we do work with the police department and we kind of have an agreement where we'll allow a vehicle two wheels on the car on the sidewalk if they uh still can pass through the sidewalk.

All four tires on the sidewalk is outrageous, and we do tag that uh aggressively.

Okay, great.

Well that's good to know.

I mean, folks always ask sort of what it what should they do.

Um I tell them to call 911.

I know I I don't know if that's sort of an extreme extreme advice, but you know, sometimes it's the type of thing where it's like you have to you gotta get it while it's happening.

Um is that is that what what you would recommend, or is there another avenue that would be you know for folks, you know, if they're walking their kids to school or whatever, and they're just like a car parked in the middle of the sidewalk?

If it's during the business hours during a day, I would recommend they call us and we can uh investigate and go up there that day and look at it, and if it's a uh continued problem, we can uh uh develop an enforcement scheme up here to try to change their parking behaviors.

Oh, okay, that's interesting.

So when you say call us, what is that like call like the direct is there like a direct line for parking authority?

Because normally we tell people just call 311, but I don't know.

The 311 calls get uh transferred to us.

So if they call 311, we'll we receive those calls.

Oh, and does that happen like in a somewhat timely like same day or within it might be the next day we get them, we don't get them on the same day.

Uh I don't have the number of the authority.

Do you have the authority number they could call?

Yeah, enforcement.

We uh we can we can go.

On our website, they can see our phone numbers to call.

Oh, okay.

Well, maybe that would be okay.

Then maybe that's just good for for me to know, for my staff to know that we can say, look, if you if you want to get the you know get in touch with with the parking authority today, then they might be able to come out and do it, you know, for those really egregious um parking on the sidewalk situations.

Um okay, I don't think I have I do I do want to say I I I just want to really compliment your staff.

Uh whenever I call you staff's always really great about keeping me updated on anything that's going on in my district, what like around around you know, parking lots or whatever, and also um I I I want to say I really appreciate how accommodating uh your staff is for like special well, we have like special occasion type things, like if you know if I call in about I don't know, like it was like on the Veterans Day parade or like do you know, or like if there's a uh uh uh holiday or something like a Jewish holiday about um really being responsive about you know either not ticketing or just kind of you know that that type of thing uh around those special events and and everyone's just really responsive and helpful and I I I definitely appreciate it.

Thank you for the comments and uh well received uh I feel very fortunate.

We do have staff at uh uh is uh efficient and you know cares about the public's concerns.

But thank you for your comments.

Yeah, absolutely.

That that's it for me, Councilman.

Thank you so much.

And apologies again for not being in there.

I'm actually on my way up now, so uh thank you, councilwoman.

Also wants to uh note for the record that we are joined by Councilman Wilson and Councilwoman Strasberger and Charlotte is also on the and Councilman Charlotte is also online.

Um so I offer the floor to uh Councilman Wilson.

You have any questions or comments.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks for the work you do.

Obviously, uh, you know, we work closer together, and uh I don't really have any questions other than Peter when you went over the you just went over this sheet right here where basically all the information, yeah.

No, we just highlighted a couple things on the budget, but uh Peter did most of the Do you have any information regarding just uh what I've been briefed on in terms of like the uh the recovery of the the parking authority, like how that's been going.

Uh yeah, every year we've been uh going in a right trending in the right direction, recovering.

I'm assuming you mean from uh post-COVID.

Yeah uh this year, Judy, if I'm correct, we've finished uh a year about two million uh short of uh the 2019 numbers.

So we've seen the numbers uh go in the right direction.

Meter revenues have uh exceeded the numbers from 2019 and the garage revenues are roughly about 20 uh two million dollars shy of that.

Okay.

Yeah, and uh I know I'm familiar with it.

I just didn't know if there was some other uh highlights that you wanted to just let council know let the public know on how the authorities do it.

We're we're having we had a good year and we anticipate having another good year uh in 2026.

Uh parking coming back down to uh especially out in Oakland, the Forbes Sample Garage is filling up five days a week by 8 30 a.m.

Monday through Friday.

The downtown garages are filling up uh definitely Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursdays, and we're seeing more uptick on Mondays and Fridays now with the uh utilization of those garages.

And the meter utilization is uh increased throughout the city uh uh year to year.

Any any plans for meter expansion?

Not meter expansion so much, but some paid parking zones.

We're looking to uh incorporate Hazelwood Green uh in 20 early 2026.

That's probably an additional five, six hundred spaces out there where the development's occurring.

And then we're always working with Domi and our console if they have uh any recommended areas for uh paid parking stars.

The uh Hazelwood Green, why I said it's not meter uh in uh additional meters because it's gonna be a phone app area only.

We won't have meters in that area.

We're gonna go since it's a high-tech area with the phone apps only and do automated enforcement in that area.

Okay.

And uh as of now, we have all of the all of the surface loss, like we started on the south side, and then I know recently the one on the north side was incorporated into the the camera program.

So we have all service lots now are thir thirteen.

They'll be going.

We're in the beginning of the first quarter of uh 2026.

We'll have 13 more lots that'll go online, but not all 30.

So we were strategic about which ones we went with camera enforcement.

So I know I know the tickets have increased uh obviously because I've seen the numbers during our meetings, but um uh have we seen more compliance after the first year of of increased tickets?

Like are people like it seems like more people are getting caught because you know there is a camera system in the service lot.

I thought that was interesting.

Just how much the how much the amount of tickets increase.

I'm just wondering, are we seeing a compliance with yeah?

So on the two south side lots that are are predominantly transient-based because of the nightlife scene.

We haven't seen as much turn to compliance as we have tickets in that.

Um, but the the lot in East Liberty has seen it about three to four months of having camera enforcement go from tickets to compliance.

So we're we're starting to trend down of the parking tickets and trend up with the Southside.

Yeah.

It has not changed the behavior of the U.S.

but they're not, I mean, they're not uh routine parkers.

Yeah.

Okay, yeah, people are coming.

They can get away with it.

Exactly.

Gotcha.

All right, thanks.

Yeah, I just wanted to give a moment for you to highlight any of the other uh you know um you know, basically the health of the authority.

I think every year we definitely use the parking authority as uh as like a guidepost on you know what the economy how's it how the you know how the economy is doing.

Yeah, so thanks for uh all your work over there.

Thanks.

Thank you, boy.

Councilman, and thank you for your support throughout the year being on the board.

Thank you, Councilman.

Uh Councilwoman Strasberger, uh the floor is yours for any questions or comments.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thanks for being here today.

And I apologize for missing your your presentation.

I was listening in my office.

I um uh like the like the council, like Councilman Wilson said already, I um have seen um I I've been grateful to see that you know parking is returned downtown and in Oakland and some of the lots and and garages.

Um and so that recovery has gone quite well post-pandemic.

How I know that the one thing that uh you know a lot of authorities and um agencies were were struggling with was um recruitment and retain retaining staff.

How are the how is that going with uh enforcement officers and kind of filling the the positions, the open positions to be able to ensure that enforcement is happening properly?

We have seen an increase now in the staffing levels.

Uh we still have some openings here.

Uh our 26th budget probably only has about a handful of open positions here, but we've seen a significant increase in uh staffing levels in 2025 in both the uh um asked me enforcement officers and the garage attendance.

Great, great.

I know that was like the one remaining pain point um even last year.

So good.

Supplement it by the uh automated enforcement.

We feel like we're in a pretty good position at a staffing level right now.

Yeah, and that was the other thing I wanted to touch on.

Automated enforcement ticket by mail has been such a game changer.

I know that we still have kinks to work out here and there, you know, ensuring and that's it's just it's because it's two different agencies in Stomy and it's um parking authority ensuring the proper signage is there to warn drivers and parkers, but um in terms of efficiency, I know that's a game changer, and I know um that you're always thinking about new and creative ways to be even more effective and to be more um uh to buy the the the best possible service.

So look forward to working with you in the coming year.

I don't have any major questions.

Um, actually the last one I I had thought of was what are you doing uh in preparation, both kind of to in preparation for any I guess um not negative, but um uh to to guard against any kind of um unintended consequences or to reap the benefits of the coming NFL draft.

Uh I'm working with uh I'm on the uh transportation mobility and parking committee with the NFL draft in the city.

There's about 30 members on that, so I mean uh bi-monthly with them now, try to stay on top of things and uh so not only give our input but also be aware of what uh the road closures will be and all that.

So we're trying to deal with that in advance, and we're working with all the right agencies now.

So we've invited to the table to participate in the planning process.

Well do you see an expected bump from that um in terms of the the Pittsburgh parking authority street spaces, lots, or is it mostly gonna be privately owned lots that briefly?

No, I think everyone's gonna see a bump in that.

It's all depending on the uh road closures and access to our garages.

Uh we're keeping an eye mostly on Fort Duquesne and 6.

It's a thousand space garage, but if you can't get to it, that's what be the what hurts the authority.

But if you you're able to uh the roads are open to our facilities, we should see a significant bump in that weekend.

Great.

Good to hear.

Well, thank you very much.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Councilwoman.

Um now uh I'm gonna offer the floor to Councilman Charlotte, who's online yes, thank you.

Uh and I apologize for not being able to be there uh this morning.

Um but I I do want to follow up.

So I'm getting um blown up about this ticking ticketing situation um on the in the lots and south side.

So can you tell me what our policy is supposed to be on Sundays uh for ticketing in the lots and Sundays?

Yes, the uh we just made a change on that policy and we're enforcing the Sunday slots to say consistent with the uh enforcement of the two uh lots that are in the uh Ped District.

Uh and that's what caused the uh I guess the uprise from there.

Uh we've worked with the church in the past or we've uh we'll be uh rescinding those tickets were issued on Sunday while they were uh patrons were masses or services, and we'll uh be stopping the enforcement for uh Sunday enforcement uh in those two lots around the church areas.

But the other lots enforcement on Sunday came from the PED uh request in the city to enforce those on Sunday to uh help uh better control the crowds in the uh SA site in the evenings.

So the the way that that was supposed to work was that the pet enforcement in the evenings on Sunday, starting at six o'clock was you know, we were supposed to have pet enforcement.

Um we were not supposed to have enforcement up until then on a Sunday.

And I I don't know how that changed, you know, uh but I I I do we do need to look into that.

It was supposed to be, you know, what parking was supposed to be free up until 6 p.m.

on a Sunday.

That was not the case in the PED for the last several months or at least six months, and uh we've been enforcing those uh why did that how did that change?

I think it came through the request of the PED and in your office, Councilman.

It it certainly did not.

We would not have requested that we do a full Sunday enforcement.

It's not on the street.

Uh sir.

It is not on the streets, it's only in the lots, and signs went up at the beginning of the year saying that it would be enforced 24 hours, and it has not been up until uh until recently, but it was started at 6 o'clock in the lots to match on the streets, but the meters um there is no enforcement, and there's the meters are still free on the street.

On the street, but the the lots also shouldn't, we shouldn't be charging in the lots on Sundays up until 6 p.m.

I I don't understand why we're we're doing that.

We're we're not deterring a bar crowd in the middle of the day on a Sunday.

I'll pull out I'll check the the why it changed uh six months ago when the uh lots where the PES are.

The other uh lots again, uh like I said, we made the policy change and got approval to uh enforce on Sunday to match the other lots, and that created the confusion and headaches down in the South side uh for the uh services.

But we have uh worked with the church in the pastor and it's already been corrected.

Well, with the church, yeah, but there were other people that were ticketed as well, um, you know, on the that work in Southside on Sundays that are used to not paying that.

And you know, Matt sent me an email kind of laying that out, but unfortunately, some people have already paid their tickets.

So, you know, it look this the problem here is that the pet is such a valuable tool for us in Southside.

It's you know, again, so valuable that um other areas of of town are starting to look at it.

I don't want to you know draw an uproar against it and make people hate this program, overthrow the whole thing, and now we have to find additional revenues to you know to to fill that gap there.

I I just don't understand why we changed the policy on Sunday.

We we always wanted people, you know, specifically with uh you know all the churches in Southside.

We wanted people to be able to park for free up until 6 p.m.

You know, when when we're we're concerned there.

So you know, I I do we do need to look at this.

Um and you know, I'm I'm getting again requests all throughout from our business district manager to um you know the the churches and bar owners all throughout the street.

So I I you know I'm I was very supportive of of uh automated enforcement and ticket by mail and and doing that in the lots.

Uh you know, and I'm also very supportive of enforcing on Sunday nights, but during the day we we've got to change that.

Yes, I again like I said, we've worked with uh the pastor and we have changed that now.

But the streets have always been free.

And the private understanding the private lots are still charging on Sundays.

Yep, not we're not worried about the private lots, we're worried about your lots.

So I I I do, you know, we do have to get to the bottom of this and make sure that we're um we're giving you know clear that that people coming to Southside are having have a clear understanding of where they can park and when they can park there.

Well, it was definitely advertised, councilman.

I mean, the sign's been up three months in advance of us enforcing it.

Uh we wanted to give them notice.

So it has it has been advertised through on the surface lots itself.

Okay, I'll have to have to go look at that today.

I I you know that that isn't it hasn't been the case.

And tell me this.

So if we're enforcing on Sundays, is that revenue going to the Ped Fund?

No.

We just not if it's not in the PEDRs.

Okay.

So I mean, it isn't.

So we're just enforcing on Sundays, and it's going.

Oh, I I guess that so your argument here doesn't make sense to me because you said the the pet is why we're enforcing on Sundays, but it's not going to the PED.

No, I didn't say that's why we increased.

The the PED lots were uh enforced Sunday after six uh for last probably year.

Then after we did our study and evaluation, we made the decision to increase the uh payments uh on Sundays and the other lots in the South side too, uh 24-7.

After six or before seven, so we're doing full day on Sunday and all the lots in Southside.

We were and that because of and you say that's because of the PED?

No.

Not because of the PED.

So we need to change that.

Ultimately, what needs to happen is we need to do not be enforcing in the in the lots on Sundays up until six.

So whatever we need to do, I'll work with Councilman Wilson on this, but whatever needs to happen um to move forward here, you know, we and we need to make sure that there's uh you know clear understanding of what the rules are in this district.

You know, we're as we're trying to build the businesses or dropped, we can't have people, we can't have confusion about where you can park your car at what times.

So you know, I I'm I'm really frustrated by this.

Uh this has been you know not a uh a blessing this week, and again, I I have been very supportive of the a lot of the work that you have done and you know going to automated enforcement and uh the work that you've been able to do in the lots, but this has been really really a headache here.

So uh we've we've got to make some changes.

I hear you.

Uh there's nothing you can work with council.

Uh it was board approved for us to do that at the authority, it's not city council's, it wasn't cities council decision or approval.

And as I noted before, we've already addressed the situation and it is corrected.

Okay.

So I'll work with council's representative on your board um to try to make some changes there.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilman.

Uh Councilwoman Gross.

Do you have the floor if you have any questions or comments?

Hi, hold on one sec.

I'm uh switching my microphone.

There, can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Okay, appreciate it.

Again, thank you all.

Um I I do have some quite lost two again.

Sorry.

Thank you.

Um I do want to thank the parking authority.

Now it's been several years of working through the logistics with Dilmy and community groups and community meetings and my office on the mobility enhancement district.

Um, and so we're really glad to see it get off the ground.

We're grateful for our first year of revenue that we get to allocate.

Um, and that was read into the record.

Um just this past week, and we'll be making lots of corners and crosswalks um and sections of Florenceville, hopefully much safer for people on the streets.

Um but I am I did pay careful attention to Councilman Charlotte's questions because as we are also expanding, especially the footprint of where meters and um curb blank that is both hybrid and metered, we want to make sure that there isn't confusion.

So we'll be watching for that and also paying careful attention to the new revenue and which ones are allocated to the parking authority and which ones are allocated to the enhancement district.

Um I know we went back and forth many times over the course of the year about how that additional revenue would be allocated.

Um, of course, as the council people who are advocating for these changes and put the legislation in place, it seemed to me that 100% of the enhancement should go into the fund.

Um so you know, we'll we'll just be watching and waiting.

So far, I feel like everybody's comfortable with how it's working.

So I do appreciate that line of questioning.

Um I just wanted to confirm something that I think I know, and my staff thinks we know, but um I wanted to talk about here, which is the ticketing by mail.

Um, can you tell me kind of like how that's going and what's the status?

Uh yes, uh councilwoman, the status is uh going uh quite well.

We have uh I guess three different types of ticket by mail going on right now.

We have the stationary cameras in the lots.

Uh we have the smart loading zones, and just recently we're rolling out the uh mobile LPRs uh for street enforcement for automative enforcement.

Uh they're going well.

The uh tickets are being reviewed by our staffs before they're downloaded to parking court, and then that once the parking court receives them, the same process is initiated for a collection of a ticket, just as it was placed on the windshield.

So give me a sense of like the scale of it.

Is it um like how many tickets is that that are going out by mail?

I believe last month we issued about 10,000 tickets by mail.

Amazing, amazing.

Um so yeah, we're supportive of that system.

I know that it's um it's something that is gonna help um with enforcement.

So um, and it's you know, efficient and all that kind of stuff.

So I'm supportive there.

I'm not glad that's working out.

But I I'll take the chance to shift a question to complaints that I'm getting, and I think this is probably not unique to my city council district, because um we have complaints that people have not had street sweeping for like the entire season on their streets, and yet um the complaint I got this week was that that they got a ticket for having their car parked during the hours they're not, you know, because you know, when you're supposed to move your car for the street to be swept, but they got a ticket and there's no sweeping.

There's been no sweeping, so they hadn't moved their car because of the doctor's appointment or something, and then they get a ticket.

So I I know this has happened in previous years around construction, um, where there's signs saying, you know, you know, people are forced to park at another place, and and we've had to work that out about where ticketing happened.

But tell me how it does or doesn't work with the parking authority kind of spending the staffing time, let's just put it that way, on like going around and ticketing people when in fact it isn't really street sweeping gangs, their streets not gonna get swept.

I hear you, but I would uh we don't do that practice.

Uh we work closely with public works.

They call us every morning that the street cleaners are going out in what areas, and then we assist them by sending the vehicle out with the uh automated enforcement to follow the sweeper.

If the sweeper does not go out, if they're all out of commission or done, we do not enforce street cleaning that day.

We only enforce when there's an active uh sweeper going through the streets, and we work daily during the uh street cleaning uh season with public works on how many sweepers are going out, which area they're going in, and then we send enforcement.

So uh if somebody received a ticket for street cleaning when the street wasn't cleaned, I'd like to uh see the specifics on that because that's not a practice, and again, we won't send enforcement out if the sweeper's not actively on the street.

I think we can.

Okay, okay, I hear you.

So why don't we do that?

I'll follow up separately and we'll we'll just see what happened in this situation.

But I'm glad to hear, and I'm I'll be happy to inform residents that that those ticketing cars are following actually live street sweepers that are actively sweeping.

Yes, ready today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Glad to hear it.

Um last question, last question.

I have notes here, and I don't know very much about this, that your board recently voted to authorize some AI for use at the authority.

Could you tell us about that?

Yes, we just took to the board maybe two, three months ago, got approval, they're not in yet, uh, for uh 16 uh mobile LPR units uh the capable of AI too.

We'll continue with the street cleaning pro uh street enforcement automated enforcement once these uh cameras are in and mounted on the vehicles, but they'll also be able to record the streets as they're going down there and uh create a uh map or a district of uh no parking by signage where we're a fire hydrant is or uh handicap spot is so as uh we're eventually down the road towards the end of 2026 when we have the file built, we'll be able to enforce those violations as well as the meter violations as we ride up and down the street for enforcement.

So I I think have did you say the board already approved it?

Yes.

Okay, we have had many discussions over the years um about cameras, surveillance, and now increasingly artificial intelligence.

Um I believe we put legislation in place a number of years ago that I was not I didn't sponsor, but I voted on support of that banned facial recognition, for example, from cameras in the city of Pittsburgh.

And I realize there's just more and more and more of the stuff on the market.

And we have worked with our police officers to make sure that you know cameras aren't actually activated unless there's a kind of reason in the team of command to do so.

I have no idea about this technology.

So maybe we can follow up separately to make sure that there isn't anything worrisome to residents.

And I I support their concerns.

I do think we all should be vigilant about what kinds of technology we're using, even if it promises to raise revenue and be more efficient and all those kinds of things.

There are costs and you know, there are trade-offs.

There are benefits, but there are costs.

So I won't take this budget hearing to dive more deeply into that, but I and I think you know, every case that I've come across, I feel like it's important for council to raise these questions.

Sure.

Because residents have concerns um about the way we use technology, and again, rightfully so, because it has been misused in different kinds of mediums and in different cities.

So I don't know if you'd like to respond, but that would be my last mission.

Sure.

I can I clarify.

Um with the AI machines, this is only adding to the mapping of what is on the street.

It is not capturing people.

Um that is there is no video that's being captured.

Instead of just being looking for parking rights, it's also looking for other parking violations like in the bike lanes.

Um if there is a handicap spot, if they're too close to a bus stop, if they're too close to a stop sign.

So the AI piece of it is just mapping pieces of of data that are on the road, um, like a fire hydrant.

So they're not there to surveil people.

It is an added technology to add to the enforcement piece as it's as it's mapping and driving through.

So it is not looking for people, it is not recording people.

Anything that is on the stationary cameras and automotive, um, blurs out any faces.

They're not recording video, it's static um pictures that are being recorded, and that is all that is saved.

So it's it's not it's not something that can be used to look for crimes or something else that's happening.

This is strictly to be able to add to other pieces of enforcement as they're mapping it out, like I said, with um pieces on a block, like I said, a handicapped spot, a fire hydrant, a no parking zone, um things of that nature.

Thank you.

I'll I'll just point out that's good to know.

Again, it's good to ask, and it's good to have the answers.

Um I'll just add that we learned uh hard way at Domi several years ago.

I'm not even exactly sure which of the technology companies they contracted that um we broke the contract because the data was captured, but the company claimed ownership of the data.

I wouldn't hand it over.

And then so they were just trying to rook us into like an expensive ongoing contract in order to use the data from our streets.

So again, this is a another separate conversation.

I do appreciate your your answering the question about again that the red flags of surveillance and cameras.

Um that's good to know, but uh we should all ask a lot of questions when it comes to these big technology contracts.

So I appreciate your time and attention.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, councilwoman.

Um I don't have too many questions.

One question I I did want to ask was just remembering it was about a year ago uh when you came before us and it was specifically around the issue of of lifting the residency requirement.

Um you you said staffing is up.

Could you kind of give us a year by year comparison of since the residency requirement was lifted?

You know, how have you progressed with staffing up?

I don't have that information right here, but I can have it sent to you.

Okay.

And and and and even just without like the specified details, can you just you know speak from a ballpark perspective of do you well, I guess a better way to ask a question is do you have do you see that lifting the residency requirement has that you know began to address the challenges that you had with staffing prior to lifting the rule requirement?

We had a significant cre increase even overnight when the residency got lifted when jobs were posted that as soon as that was taken off, we saw a significant increase in in applicants coming through.

We still give priority um if it they are a city resident.

Um but it it literally happened almost overnight.

Um and so staffing has gone up, and I think the other issue of um any any wage discrepancies has been addressed with the new um new negotiation.

So I think we're being able to not only get more people in, but have a broader pool to be able to pull from, even in non-union staffing to be able to um get uh sp significant staffing in just the office areas um to be able to uh broaden that.

So and uh I guess with both you I would just add that with both union position and since it's been lifted, uh I don't believe we uh turned away any city resident that applied for the job if they were qualified.

We we were able to hire those people also because we were so short staffed, so it wasn't like we were turning away city residents.

Uh we were able to hire those individuals also.

Okay, and my my only other question, you know, it's just around coordination.

Um, you know, you know, all of us have you know numerous, you know, Domey projects.

I'm thinking about a particular uh project that's at the board of district eight and district nine.

I mean and Councilwoman Strasberger, I've been, you know, working with Domey as well as residents on, and we have a meeting coming up on Monday about my question is just around when you know Domi does, you know, do these projects, you know, particularly around traffic harming, you know, and and traffic safety, and and oftentimes it it it involves eliminating you know on street parking are are is the parking authority consulted into that and are you made aware of uh of when those those changes are made when particularly on street parking, you know, may be removed um due to either bike lanes or other uh kinds of uh uh traffic calming measures that Domi does.

I would say in the past we have not been uh we have a much better relationship now with DOME.

We actually have a standing call uh bimonthly with them.

Uh we don't know all their projects.

Sometimes we do find out a little bit after they're approved and going forward and the space has been eliminated.

But working with them if we know of advance that the space is being taken out of service either temporary or permanently, we'll estimate the dollar revenues associated with those loss of spaces and share it with Domi so they know can make an informed decision on you know whether to keep the project moving forward or not.

But again, we've been uh meeting with them via phone meetings uh twice a month now and trying to uh communicate because we realize both department have an effect on each other.

Thank you.

And uh I just want to offer up for anyone here online if they have any any follow-up questions, I see Councilwoman Warwick, she raised her hand about a nanosecond before Councilman Wilson would uh keep a stack.

Uh councilwoman Warwick then councilman Wilson.

So I did want to ask, uh just since we were ta uh about what what is the history of the no parking on Sunday?

I mean, just generally.

Parking's been free on Sundays on both the streets.

Or sorry, that's what I meant.

Free parking on Sundays.

On the streets and the lots.

And what's the what was what's the history of that?

Like what's the reason for that?

I don't know that it's been that way for many years.

I don't know the reasons or why it's that way.

It's always been that way.

Uh but through the changes that have occurred today in our industry and the parking situation in Pittsburgh, we evaluated and want seen the effect on it.

And uh now that we're able to enforce it, we made the decision and brought it to our board and had approval to uh enforce on Sundays uh in those certain areas.

Yeah, I mean I would I am and this isn't specific to any particular area, just in general, right, to enforcing parking on like there's no difference between us that like if I want to drive my car somewhere where there's paid parking, right?

Like and I want to park my car on public space, I should pay for that, whether it's on a Sunday or on a Saturday or on a Tuesday.

Um so I I I just want to say that I I agree with that.

And as as far as um, you know, and I assume that there is some sort of sort of like uh and you know, like a religious, you know um history to that, I assume, right?

With Sundays and whatnot.

But but uh, you know, I do want to point out for for churches or you know, or or you know, religious institutions, um it's worth noting that you know, they don't pay property taxes, whereas like our business owners do so.

If it's like uh an argument of like, well, because I know a lot of business owners are like, well, free parking helps that because you know it's like you can come down to the business district and you can park, but you know, in terms of kind of alleviating the burden um if you're taking institutions that don't pay property taxes versus business owners that do pay taxes, I would be more inclined to kind of pick like a day that may like a like a random Tuesday where it's like, hey, come down and go shopping because parking is free, right?

Like something something along those lines.

Um and I, you know, and again, it's not my and I understand that confusion can arise, and I I saw something about it on KDK as well.

But um, you know, and I think that if you know, if a church has a large congregation, it might be a conversation that you know that maybe the church can subsidize the parking for their parishioners, right?

And then the larger congregations versus, you know, and it would be less of a burden, of course, for smaller congregations.

Just a thought.

And I and I think that's where that came from.

It wasn't necessarily the churches pushing it, but the their um the people that um go to church are on a fixed income, and so I think that they were upset that they got tickets and they were used to not being ticketed.

So I think that's that's where that had arisen from.

Um, but you know, I and I'll um like I said, I'll I'll certainly take the heat for trying to go.

We we were leveraging having the automated enforcement for cameras rather than having people out there, and since we had the cameras, we had the availability to go to 24 hour enforcement in these lots as a way to generate revenue for you know the city and and us in in uh in an area that hadn't been tapped into before because we didn't have the enforcement officers going out to look at it.

Uming that, yes, that it it had cost an issue with with the parishioners that were there.

I think the businesses are also trying to come down, but I mean I'll even like speak for myself when I go down to the strip and I go into you know the terminal and and I patronize a uh a business there, they pay for two-hour parking because I'm going in there and the businesses actually pay and reimburse for the parking, and then if I go over that, then I pay for it.

Um but it was something that you know we probably need to look into it a little bit more, but it seems to be causing a lot of issues.

But it was one of those things that the the private lots have always charged on Sunday.

They charge every day.

There's never anything, so it's like why are we why are we not tapping into a revenue source of having these paid, knowing that the streets, the the streets are free, but you know, worrying about the lots because we had the automated enforcement to be able to leverage that um that capability.

So like I said, I I'll take the heat for that.

Sure.

But I mean I would just argue, just generally speaking, right, that even the streets should not be free on Sunday, right?

Like I I think that as a city, we really need to be moving forward into and as as frustrating as it may be for folks, you know, we all have car, you know, most of us have cars, um, 80% of us, but that the public right-of-way is public property, and your you know, that you you don't have a right to just store your large piece of metal on the public right-of-way because it, you know, I and it so I I just think that that is that is something that we need to start sort of getting used to as a city, right?

Like our streets are congested, we there is so little room, especially we've talked a lot about uh uh residential parking perimes, and people are adverse to that, but you know people have and there's ways to prioritize it, right?

But but I think as a city in terms of revenue, in terms of space, in terms of quality of life, uh, for all road users, we need to really start looking at cars in the same way as you would look at anything else that you just want to I can't I can't go, you know, store whatever my other personal belongings in the middle of the street, right?

Um and so I just think that that's that's something that we should be a little more clear in in our approach to just how we deal with our public right-of-ways and who and who gets to use them and what they're for what they're for, what they're intended for.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Appreciate the comments.

I think we're on the kind of the same page with our thinking and processing.

But thanks for the comments.

Thank you, Councilwoman.

Uh councilman Wilson.

Thank you, Chair.

I was envisioning uh a big metal pipe on the street.

Still morning for me, I guess.

Uh I did want to ask if you could provide counsel, since it has been um a topic at the time, whenever we were talking about residency.

Uh and then it continues to be a conversation, just not at the not the authority.

I mean, maybe it will be a conversation in the future, but regardless of the conversation about residency always comes up in the city, different department and different, you know, bureaus, uh, different you know, employ there's asking employees here.

So just want to um try to understand more of how residency, if you lift it, how it unfolds.

Could you provide council the numbers of um of the uh well there was two different positions really we were focusing on was the garage attendance and then the parking meter enforcement officers.

Those numbers prior to it being lifted, after it being lifted, and then when the contract was finalized, like I don't know, I guess give it you know the numbers after I don't know how to do that.

Yeah.

I mean, whenever at least whenever the numbers, you know, the numbers were updated, or the I'm sorry, the the uh you know the income, the hourly rate, right?

Is an hourly rate the post?

Yeah, after that posting.

Yeah.

So they haven't taken effect yet.

So they haven't taken effect.

No, not until January.

So really we just signed the country.

It's the yeah, the new.

Okay, so you want we wouldn't have those we won't have those numbers yet.

Well, at least the we'd have the preliminary priority.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And then it'd be good to follow up once the contract is signed.

Are you I think we're we uh have a tenant agreement on both.

It just they both expire December 31st won't take effect till January 1st.

Okay.

But they are signed, right?

They're not signed, but they're tenderly agreed to.

The unions both membership ratified them.

But they won't go into effect, yeah.

Yes.

Can you talk about what the increases are?

Uh yes, I think uh the you have those done.

Yeah, yeah, they haven't ratified the other one yet, though.

So I'd prefer not to talk about that one.

Well, the ask me one was ratified.

I think uh the original contract today, they're at about $20 an hour.

And then 2026, they'll jump up to uh is it 26?

I believe 25 or 26 dollars an hour.

Okay.

Yeah, I was here in 26, so thanks for confirming that.

Okay.

Yeah, if you could just provide those information, then once the contract is done, I guess give it a month and then be interested to see what those numbers are after that big increase from 20 to 26.

All right, thanks.

We also uh increased, I don't know what the number is.

The uh they have a tier level, so the uh starting wage increase to attract uh more people also for the teamsters.

For the teamsters.

Okay.

All right, thanks.

Thank you, Councilman.

Um, is there anybody else at the table or online that has any other questions or comments?

Seeing that there is none, I want to thank uh the parking authority staff, uh Director Onorado and and your staff for uh being here today and for your presentation, answering our questions, and thank you for your service on behalf of the people of the city and have a wonderful holiday season.

You too, thank you, and uh happy holidays to all the council members.

Thank you for your support throughout the year.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Now I'd like to invite uh those from the equipment leasing authority to join us at the table, and why they are joining us at the table, I will ask our budget director, Peter McDevitt, to give a brief overview of the authority.

Thank you, Councilman.

The equipment leasing authority was incorporated in 1980 to serve as a financing mechanism enabling the city of Pittsburgh to make major equipment purchases, primarily vehicles.

The ELA would issue bonds, buy vehicles, hold titles of those vehicles, and lease them to the city.

The lease payments amortize the bonds.

Since it's an incorporation, the ELA has continued its role as the city's central player in fleet acquisition, maintenance, repair, and replacement.

The ELA is composed of five members, three appointed by the mayor and two appointed by council president.

Currently, Councilman Coghill and myself reside on the ELA board.

And um I've also included the acquisition plan that has been approved through the operating of capital budgets.

This is actually a super useful tool that um I'll give a shout out to Chief Financial Officer Patrick for including it.

Uh it's towards the end of the capital budget, but this shows all of the the vehicles that are included in each of the different um budgets that you can see there.

Uh it totals 50 vehicles and just over 10 million dollars.

That's all I have.

Thank you, Director McDevitt.

And now uh for the authority, uh, we'd like to act the representatives from the equipment leasing authority to introduce themselves, their titles, and then feel free to begin the presentation after introductions.

So I'm actually gonna introduce myself again as the ELA board uh treasurer Peter McDevitt.

I'm the chair, I'm Lisa Frank.

Jennifer Olzinger, Chief Procurement Officer, uh also handle fleet.

Firman Morris, senior manager of fleet services.

Uh Chris Hornstein, the vice chair of the ELA.

And thank you, and feel free to begin your presentation.

Okay.

As mentioned, uh the capital plan includes 50 vehicles selected for replacement in the year of 2026.

These vehicles are or have been selected because they are basically the worst of the worse uh financially they are past that point of financial responsibility here.

Um these units were selected using multiple criteria such as downtime, uh five-year costs.

What we've seen by examining those five-year costs is that when vehicles hit a certain age, the cost to maintain and repair rises drastically.

The plan you see before you is basically to stop the bleeding um of the continued financial responsibility of the city as far as these vehicles.

Okay.

Um is there any any wells from the authority that uh would like to share?

And also want to uh note for the record um that Lee Schmitt, director of public safety, has joined us as well.

And we're joined by again we're joined by council members at Barb Warwick, Erica Straussberger, Bobby Wilson, and uh Councilman Sharlin and Councilwoman Gross are also joining us online.

I can add a little bit as uh member of the ELA and then also the director that has probably the largest fleet next to Chris and DPW.

Um, you know, something and I have brought my chiefs here to speak on their own behalf if you wish to talk to any of them.

But um, you know, we've said it for quite some time.

The ELA can only fund what it's given.

Um there's always a much, much higher demand for vehicles than what the ELA is given funding for.

And I think working with Furman and the rest of the fleet team, we have developed some future plans and some better ways to uh as Furman put it, stop the bleed, but we really need some major investment to get it uh even to that point that we're not on life support, which is kind of where we are now.

So I don't know if anybody else has anything but that's I I'm probably saying a version of the things that people have already said, but I think um the the real, I think the real purpose in addition to uh the financial responsibility this is to have the vehicles available to our staff that they need to have available to be able to do the work that our residents expect to be done.

And um and I think over the years that I've been part of the ALA, we have presented variously to council and uh sometimes at a RAD meeting or sometimes anywhere we have an opportunity to talk about the fleet, what uh comprehensive plan looks like to get our fleet to a state where using all of the metrics that Ferman has mentioned, what's the correct lifespan of uh of a vehicle, maybe uh so that we sell it before it has reached, you know, it's before it's on its deathbed or so on.

Using all of that information um uh to be able to say, look, if we were going to adopt a plan that might over the course of five or seven years get us to a place where we were managing the fleet asset appropriately, that looks like something along the lines of 20 million dollars a year.

Um a little up, a little down, depending on when this fire truck got bought or that something or got bought.

But on average, Furman, that's correct, right?

Something like that.

And I know um Furman also uh uh supplied us with a couple of scenarios for shorter term um fleet sort of reparation investments that said, you know, if we wanted to get fifty percent of the way towards closer, thank you to a good um, you know, to uh down the road to a properly um managed and financed fleet, we would do this.

So if we wanted to take, you know, uh six years to do it, we might do this.

And so I don't think uh to to um Director Schmidt's point, I don't think we lack for an understanding of our fleet, where it is, and I really want to credit Furman with that.

He uh can tell you every vehicle we have, when it was bought, how many times it's been repaired, what ideally we would when ideally we would dump it if we weren't hanging on to it because we don't have anything else.

I think we understand the asset, and I think we understand the level of investment that's needed the asset.

And the last thing that I'll just say is um I think we have done some work uh that was you know needed to uh given given uh how much money we we can't afford to make mistakes.

If we already don't have enough money, we do not want to be making mistakes.

We do not want to be buying the wrong things at the wrong time.

We do not want to be um investing in things that it turns out it doesn't work.

And so we took uh pain, uh some of them formal, we changed the bylaws of the ELA, some of them a little less formal, to make sure that every single purchase we're making is being run through the asset management plan rather than the grants office in conjunction with a director saying, hey, let's try this, or you know, staff kind of lobbying here and there for the things they need because we have made some costly mistakes that way.

So I think I I think at this point the the reason people are talking about money is because I think uh the the current ELA, you know, thanks to its members and to Furman and Jen and others have really um straightened out our understanding of the asset and have straightened out our own internal operations to prevent us from making costly mistakes.

We really are just talking about getting with the plan.

I'll I'll add to that too.

Um council discussed yesterday uh an amendment, and it's also important to to clarify that the ELA does not manage the maintenance of the vehicles that is wholly on the city.

The LA does the purchasing of the vehicles and holding of the titles of the vehicles.

So they don't do anything with the maintenance that is on the the city's team uh to manage that.

But the city did have to increase the contract for fleet maintenance, and that is a hundred percent because our fleet is so old and we have underfunded it.

And because of that, we've had to think of creative ways to find funding.

Um and to a point that councilwoman gross has made multiple times at this table.

Uh we we chase grants and then uh we have to buy very specific vehicles um similar to what Chief Frank was just saying that may not suit our needs.

So we're getting vehicles that might be too big for our streets because they were tied to a specific grant that was for uh a specific purpose.

So now we have big CNG trucks that we need to use throughout the city because we didn't have enough pay-go funds to to buy the vehicles that we needed.

And really the only way to get to a point where we have the fleet that we need is an increase in pay-go dollars in the capital budget.

There's no point in having all of these employees if they do not have the tools to do the jobs.

And the only way to do that is to have an increased transfer of operating dollars to the capital budget.

And the only way to do that is to either significantly reduce operation dollars, which means cutting services or finding additional revenues that can be used unencumbered to buy the the equipment that we need to do the jobs.

And uh somebody stop us when they want to ask questions.

But um I and I think I think we have done some work that we have, you know, are now purchasing the correct vehicles through the RAD budget.

We you know, we have found, I think uh part of what the the chart that or the um appendix in the budget shows you is that um thank you that folks have have really been doing a good job thinking about funding streams that we can combine to contribute to the to the um budget for the fleet that allow us to purchase the vehicles that we that we need.

And you know, um hats off to Chris who's been working on that, and you know, uh all of the departments have been working on that, and I think we've made some progress there.

And a lot of credit to to Patrick Cornell and the rest of OMB to find creative ways to use um what funding we do have.

Um 10 million dollars is not nothing, but it's also not enough.

Yeah.

Um, do we have any other comments from the panelists or we can we can open up for questions if there's nothing additional?

Okay, I'll start with Councilman Wilson.

Thank you, Chair.

Just bring up some of my questions that I had here one second.

So overall, I appreciate all the work that you all do.

And uh I was uh listen to your comments uh chief, and I want to say that uh council uh uh has uh been updated as well.

I think in past years, uh I mean forever since I've been here, so it's not you know, I'm not sure what what happened prior to when I got here in 2020, but um I know that we were always kind of I've always felt in the dark about um until we got to this place here in the dark about the fleet.

So um, you know, the recent report that we worked on was helpful for council to get our bearings on, at least for me was super helpful to understand you know, at least the amount of vehicles, to actually see it line by line, how many are past their lifespan, um, you know, to understand that threshold why we would you know hold the line there on that calculation as which ones were past the threat past the the lifeline.

So yeah, I appreciate all the work that went into that report.

And you know, there's continued uh conversation about how bad the fleet is, and I know that keeps coming up, and people speak to it.

So it's just a challenging thing.

Um I don't think we're gonna it's something we're gonna have to work on each year, and hopefully this year, you know, I'm not sure exactly how this all plays out right now, and I'm not sure any of us do on this side of the table, but we're currently working on it, and um, you know, it will be great, obviously, to get more into this this year.

Not sure how that actually happens yet, but uh there are some ideas floating around.

But I did have some specific questions, and they put they pertain to um I'll start with street sweepers.

So this line item here for street sweeper lease year one of five.

So can you confirm uh that this is uh something that we're re-implementing?

Like a that from my understanding, we we did a leasing program at one point, and then we went back and and started purchasing them.

We we had leased them in the past, I think like maybe 10 years ago.

That was some whenever I first started the city in like 2016.

That was something that I worked on with Slim Forest Ice to lease them and used I think we used the funding source, I think was the auction proceeds that the ELA would get for selling off old retired vehicles.

Um but this is this is something that was just uh discussed yesterday at council to enter into lease agreement.

So the yeah, this is that's a that's a fresh topic.

Um to to get more at least street sweepers, and this also has maintenance built into the lease contract.

Uh so hopefully that will help alleviate how many trucks are down.

Okay, apologize, maybe I missed that conversation about street sweepers and.

Um just wanted to note that the street sweeper maintenance is done by heavy equipment.

So by leasing them and having the maintenance included that takes a big load off of heavy equipment who are already short on mechanics, right, Crit?

I mean, yes.

So this will help us keep them, keep them moving and and take the load off of heavy equipment for that maintenance.

Yeah, that's part of my that was gonna be one of my questions with the street sweeper leases because you know the maintenance part of it is just so difficult.

And you know, is that is that even something that we can get trans dev to um to fix?

Like I would I mean it kind of brings up a a topic that I'm wondering is um you know how much uh how much of our fleet like the types of vehicles that we have, like this wrap pack or thing, like and the these different vehicles that have a lot of you know, they're kind of specialized vehicles, and well, a lot of them, you know, where you go from a fire truck to an ambulance are all specialized.

But is there certain ones that transdevs like look we can only do minimal work here?

We can't do anything else, and it just makes sense just to lease it out because the because if we lease, does that mean that the part the company we lease it off, we can just send it back to them and they can make the the harder repairs that transdev can do.

Sorry, I'm not that well versed in the subject.

I'm trying to get more of an understanding.

Um in this case, yes, but not all leases would have a maintenance package.

Um I you know it would probably be case by case to see the type of vehicle um, you know, and what was available.

Um but I think the main idea here is every five years we'll get five new ones.

And we'll always have good current microphone.

Oh, sorry.

Obviously, there's issues uh in that.

Chris can probably speak more to, you know, the maintenance issues and stuff like that.

But the idea here is to keep keep it in an operating thing with a liquid tool liquid fuels trust fund.

I believe is that that's the funding source for this, right?

Correct.

So to help answer some of those questions, councilman.

The is a lease to buy or at least to own, if you will.

So we have the option at the end of the five-year term to purchase the vehicles if we so desire.

Um it does come with a maintenance package.

What we found right now with our current fleet, um, because it's older and because it's aged, um the availability of parts is not there.

Um so we have long lead time uh for parts on a piece of equipment that um you know it's very active, particularly um in the warmer months, and um can't be safely operated without.

So the maintenance package um we identified as being critical.

Um I think the added benefit of the maintenance package in this case is since we're leasing it um you know from the manufacturer, um you know they have a vested interest in making sure that the vehicle is operational and is good working order.

Um that protects their investment as well.

Are they new vehicles?

Yes.

Oh, they're new.

They're new, yes.

So I'm not used to seeing a news.

Right, right.

Um so you know, we feel like in this case, because it is a specialty piece of equipment.

It is unique among the fleet.

There are ten of them.

Um that it was a good case model to explore um ensuring the maximum amount of availability, um, best maintenance practice, um, kind of reducing some of the emburdened um problems for both heavy equipment and um trans dev.

Just to be clear, um, you know, trans div would do some maintenance on the vehicle on the on the street themselves.

It's a little bit more complex.

Most of it was done by heavy equipment, but for things related to the chassis in the vehicles would have gone to um trans dev for brakes, engine, that type of things.

Like the things that you would normally think your garage would be able to fix.

So um that's the other that's the other portion of it.

Um reducing that complexity will um allow us to improve its reliability.

Okay.

All right, thanks for answering that.

And then um in terms of leasing, I also see that we're on our sixth and third year of an apparatus lease.

Is that the fire?

Okay.

I did some questions about fire.

So uh how many vehicles?

I'm sorry, how many you refer to fire vehicle as an apparatus?

I mean, how many fire vehicles uh are past their their lifespan for recommended slight uh service?

80% probably, would you say Lee?

I haven't heard currently calculated at 64% of fire fleet passing.

Yes.

Just remind me again, like it's your microphone up.

Yes.

Uh we spend more maintenance for vehicles that are out that have exceeded their lifecycle expectation.

Okay.

That's 64%, Sam?

63.4 eight.

Okay.

And then um how long would it take to order a new one?

Lead times have uh increased over the past few years.

You are max four years for ladder or specialty apparatus.

Four years out.

Oh yes.

So we like from the time you so if we buy it today, we won't see it for four years.

Yeah, but by the time you put the order in or by the time you like figure out which fire apparatus you're buying by the time you're putting the bigger in.

By the time you put the order in.

If we order it today, it's minimum three years, if not four.

Okay.

Depending on if it's a ladder, a pump, or an aerial.

Okay.

Yeah, and that's sorry, but whenever we look at the fleet, that's uh as firm in the state sixty-four is what we're doing right now.

But when we think about the fact that four years from now, like even if I ordered ten engines right now, I'm waiting four years to get those, that sixty-four percent is very quickly gonna get up to eighty or ninety or not gonna get better.

Um yeah.

So those are things that we I think in the past haven't always thought through was lead time.

It also was not as impactful as it is now because it was a two-year lead time.

Um but even then that that's something to think through is is better planning on, which I know uh Furman has done a good job with that, but with with all of you know fire and EMS specifically.

Um police fleets, their regular vehicles are a little different because they're paid out of operating, but their specialty vehicles are in the same boat that we don't think through replacement of those vehicles or haven't historically thought through replacement of the vehicles until they were really needed to be replaced.

Um EMS, I think is 90% of those vehicles are beyond what we what normal uh emergency services would consider uh serviceable fleet.

Um fire is not much better, especially when you factor in the the lead time on orders.

Just on the on the question of timing.

I mean, the the utility I think of the of the you know big plans that show you how you would do it if you would do it um you know perfectly uh is to make sure that you're not trying to buy half your fire fleet all in the same year and to you know sort of level out the the investment so it's not like whoa, we got to do six fire trucks this year, but then this year, luckily we only have to do, you know, two F-150s.

It's to it's to actually take into account the lifespans so that so that our investment could become sort of regularized.

We can just anticipate we're gonna need roughly X million each year because we've staggered the purchasing so that vehicles come due, so to speak, at the right time.

We're not in a position to do that right now.

D do you feel like you're on a good path uh on ordering so that we don't uh so we're not at risk at you already shaking your head now?

No.

No.

We need 20 million a year to be on that path.

And like we're already behind.

If we were 20 million for ELA, but what about for I'm I mean well, that's the thing.

Like if we were in a good place, we would need 20 million a year.

We are in a bad place and we're getting 10 million.

We are very far behind on everything.

Yeah.

So what does it look like continuing to get on this path for I'm just picking on fire here?

Like I feel like I've mentioned the SUVs and fire stations.

That's where we're gonna be.

What's that?

We're just gonna have SUVs and fire stations instead of fire apparatuses.

Or I guess in the past we've we've borrowed.

We've we bought used ones from San Diego and other places that kind of help us out for six months or a year.

Okay.

And then with these um kind of take away all my questions after that, you know.

And you you you when you look at the list, you can note that there's no fire apparatus on this plan for this year at all.

Except for the lease.

Yeah, we have to do that.

Well, yeah, those are ones we already have.

Yeah, but that's already bought.

Yeah, so what so why is that?

Because we don't have enough money.

Yeah.

But like, you know, would there be I mean, just like EMS, I'm not saying that fire, whatever for all emergency vehicles.

But let's just pick on, you know, like looking at fire, like is there I don't know, if you had the like is there a strategy here to make sure that like these are all needed and we don't need to, you know, take five of them out so that we put a fire truck here?

So like I mean Furman has done a really good job of kind of prioritizing like what is what is like everything almost everything is past the life cycle, but what is the furthest and what is the the biggest issues?

Um and at this point EMS and public works are at the top of that list.

That's not to say that fire isn't also in terrible shape.

But then you have to look at the funding sources that we have available, and that's why I was saying like you need pay-go so that you can do whatever you need to do.

Yeah.

But we don't have enough pay-go.

Yeah.

So we are able to use parks tax money to fund DPW.

Uh we have a little bit more in the general fund that can go towards ambulances because of the additional Medicaid revenue that we brought in, but that needs to go towards EMS.

Um easily a million dollars.

Um for a pumper for a pumper.

For areas, probably one point five.

Yeah, it's close to two million.

Closer to one point eight or two.

Okay.

Uh and then I did have one specific um question, which I had to learn what it was.

Um but I've heard that the foam tenders are have really never been a commission.

Apparently, it's something that you tow the fire company can tow so that um yeah.

They can bring the foam to the scene.

Correct.

We have two that by previous fire stuff were poorly spec'd um and there are safety concerns on using them.

They work.

But they are they need some repairs and some changes to uh the setup so they can drive more safely.

Um folks can uh get up and down more safely.

Um I can't remember off the top of my head, but there's like some sort of heater or something that comes right at the people as they're walking up, you know, that needs moved.

I think their needs, um, the weight of where the phone sits is is kind of improperly balanced.

Um Chief Kakila could probably speak in more detail.

Um it's been probably two or three years since we um went and looked at them.

Uh do they function, yes, but if we have to deploy them, you know, it's it's not the safest.

They're not the safest.

But we would have to, you know, if we had to use them, we could.

Um again, we are putting our employees in danger.

Yeah, I like to follow up on this because uh I'm curious on like other situations like this where we've bought something and then we're unable to use it.

I mean, like this happened like right when we bought it.

It wasn't usable.

So there's the trailers have existed for a while.

That was a region 13 asset.

The trucks were purchased a few years ago.

Um cheap coquilla could give you more details for sure.

But basically that there's some issues when the foam is on the vehicle, the vehicle's a little too weighted too high because of the height of the vehicle the way they were spec.

Um we have some solutions, but then there's other reasons beyond that for the foam.

Um the foam that we have used historically that all fire departments used is no longer considered safe environmentally because of PFOS.

So we have had over the past couple years had to work towards replacing all of our foam and paying to dispose of the hazardous foam.

So there's a there's a lot of things that are come into play there, which I I mean we probably could get into separately and have a separate.

Yeah, I'm familiar with this.

I mean, actually at council we just yeah, we authorized the non whatever it's called, but yeah.

The non-hazard foam.

Um but yeah, so needs to use more.

Fortunately, we don't use the foam all that on the other.

But what's that?

Any type of foam can go in this trailer though.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's not a trailer though.

These are trucks.

Oh you can drive yes.

Uh the prior the prior apparatus we have, we still have, they're still in service for trailers.

Okay.

And then we also had a large foam truck.

That is also it's the newer vehicle.

So what happens if we need the use that we still have the ability.

We have uh a few different options.

It's just the newer trucks that they were developing for future have not been fully put in service yet.

Okay.

All right, thanks.

I've been talking long enough in a lot of this talk.

Thanks.

Thank you, Councilman.

Uh Councilwoman Strasberger.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um I I want to thank Ferman and you for providing all the information that you have in the past to us.

You've been really helpful in in helping us understand um truly where we are and where we could be and uh painting a vision of a future that could that could be should we find you know appropriate funds, sufficient funds.

Um thank you for the past presentations that you've delivered and all the work that you all do as well.

This is not not easy work.

Um I also wanted to focus in on our emergency vehicles um fire and EMS.

And um Councilman Wilson asks some of the questions I had.

I guess you have remind you have told us this before, but um I believe.

Do we have calculated the additional cost that the city has paid due to the dil delaying or due to our eaging fleet?

Like is there is there a number in dollars and a dollar amount that you have as part of that presentation that you as far as maintenance or maintenance or something that approaches answering that?

I can find that number for you.

Okay.

That would be that would be helpful.

I can do that.

Yeah.

Um do we know the exact state of the I again focusing on EMS and fire.

I just those are our emergency vehicles.

All of our vehicles are so important for various reasons.

That said, like in the worst case scenario, we could halt all street sweeping for a period of years and probably be okay.

We can't halt responding to emergencies and having the appropriate vehicles to do that.

So I that's why I'm focusing in on our emergency vehicles.

Do you have in front of you, does anyone have the numbers that that show the number of vehicles in those two categories, fire AM and EMS that are pa that are past their point of um life cycle?

Useful life cycle, thank you.

This is the these are the words that would come to me if I were on the ELA.

Um that we're still using right now.

Currently uh EMS and fire over life cycle units are 45%.

So 45% across both fleets are over life cycle.

Do you have it broken down by fleet by Yeah?

Um kind of, yes.

The um I would say the assessment tool that Foreman has developed for us is even a little more refined than that.

It it it bakes in age, it bakes in repair record, it bakes in mileage, it bakes in, you know, um it's it's downtime score, it bakes in the risk of not having it available, and I think we've got every vehicle the city owns, you know, kind of ranked in that way.

So um you know, you can look directly at the predicted like industry standard lifecycle.

You can also look at the I don't know, particular medical histories of our own vehicles and where that puts them in our um you know sense of of uh where are they next on the list for needing to be replaced, including the risk of not having them available, where you would typically see public safety vehicles with a higher risk assessment than say the bus for the senior center.

Great.

So that's helpful.

It not just the age of the vehicle, not just the cost of repair, but like the risk to the public.

Okay.

And specifically in these emergency vehicles, fire apparatus and ambulances, um engine hours is a big critical uh primary factor.

They may not be as old but the out or have as much mileage, but the hours on them, because when a fire truck is responding to an that it's running the entire time.

So if it's there for six hours, it's on.

You know, and it's we're using it so that that wears those down too.

Ambulances, obviously they're running every all the equipment has to run, the you know, the oxygen and everything in those vehicles, you know, they are they are running the entire time they are at a call.

That makes sense.

Yeah, so what specifics?

Yeah.

EMS fleet uh 78 vehicles, 42% over life cycle.

Okay.

Fire currently 114 vehicles, 48% over life cycle.

42 and 48 percent, averaging 45.

Okay.

And you know, if we were to find additional funds, I assume that you have like let's just say it was like a a doubling on the amount of additional 10 million dollars.

I assume that you would have at the ready the exact like next list ready to go.

It's ready.

Okay.

Um where do our public safety um uh vehicles fall, kind of in that list?

EMS is at the top.

All right, aren't they?

Like they're yeah, EMS uh scored very highly.

Yeah.

With fire right behind.

But for like a next one.

Yes.

Yeah.

So we can get down this far.

Yes.

Uh they were included in the submission, as you well know, capital is limited, so the line had to be drawn somewhere.

Sh sure.

I'm speaking in a fictional world where maybe not fictional.

Magically uh the bank opened up.

Yeah, we have determined to prepare how what would you do if the bottom line was I think eight million?

What would you do if the bottom line was twelve million?

What would you do?

And then we had the members of the ELA and directors look at that.

So the I think the very short answer to your question is is it at the ready?

It's at the ready.

I don't want to say too much.

Council members are in are in talks right now with some, you know, shifting of of various funds funding streams.

And if there was ever a time when our nonprofits or largest nonprofits need to step up and fund the city, if we were to able to get uh an agreement with them, vehicles are um so essential that I would I would I would hope that that would be a big part of a pilot agreement with our big largest nonprofits.

And I'll stop there.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, councilwoman.

Uh councilwoman Warwick, the floor is yours.

Yeah, thank you.

So just for and I I know we've talked about, but just to explain again.

And maybe in two scenarios, sort of uh I'll call a regular vehicle, right?

Like a standard pickup truck, yes, you be something like that, versus a specialty vehicle like a fire truck or whatever.

What is the cost difference over the I'm trying to get the to really understand the cost difference between lease versus buy, right?

So if you're leasing for seven years with a you know, with a a package for service versus buying a vehicle that would that you would own and fix yourself for maybe twice as long as the lease.

Is that something that we have I don't have that readily available, but I can work on that.

I mean yeah, we've that's something that's been discussed for years since I was an OMB, the idea of like leasing all of our non-specialty fleet.

Um we don't have that those figures, what it would look like, I don't think.

I'm looking at Chris, who I think has given a lot of thought to to what kinds of things might make sense to lease versus you know, including the cost of them.

I I just know you've done a lot of thinking about that for DPW.

Yeah, I think before you can adequately answer that question.

I think the first question you have to ask is what is the requirement here?

What is the need?

Um I'm not convinced that like Peter mentioned earlier that the city's responsibility is for maintenance.

You know, the ALA's board is to is the purchase of the vehicles.

And so often we look at our fleet and we say, these are all the vehicles that we have and this is our funding need, but we've not yet actually taken the step to say what is our actual requirement here for this vehicle performing work.

Like what is its work, why is this required, what is driving the need for this particular vehicle?

There are certain vehicles that we have that are absolutely essential that we need that don't get operated very often for a variety of reasons.

Are there ways that we can look in the work to maximize our potential in different ways?

That hasn't been done yet.

Um needs to be done.

Uh departments have to do that work.

Um I've tasked my team to begin that conversation internally.

That helps answer the question of what's the what's the best value proposition lease versus um ownership in talking with other surrounding municipalities for commonly vehicles where you have a high volume of ownership for so for public works that would be like one ton dump.

Um would be what my classic example.

There's probably a really good case model there to say it would be financially in the city's best interest to lease versus own.

Um you probably get a very favorable term from the manufacturer and you would get um comparable maintenance um being performed.

Yeah, it's an analysis that kind of has to be done.

It's um going through that procurement process is I think sometimes a little bit tricky.

Um but it's certainly a worthwhile exercise.

Um the way I look at it is where it makes the best for my perspective, where it makes the best cost sense and reliability sense so that the vehicle is always available is when you have either a high volume of a commonly desired vehicle in the market.

For us, that would be like a one-ton in public works.

Um or conversely, highly specialized vehicle that only a few partners would want, like a like a street sweeper.

Well, so I mean so I'm just looking at it here like with fire, so let's just take one of these fire you know apparatuses.

So you got like a we'll just say 550K for the year.

Is that the ye is that the cost per year for the lease?

Yeah.

So the cost per year is 550 over seven years is sorry, math.

Is three point eight five.

Wait.

Million, yeah.

Over three point eight five million total versus one million plus repairs.

Do we and do we have a rough idea of what the repair?

I mean, ballpi.

I don't know.

Like the lifetime of repairs on a repairs are on us for this, isn't it?

Correct.

Yeah.

The the fire apparatuses, the city is responsible for the maintenance.

Oh, so we're s we're still repairing the way we were so far behind on um fire apparatuses that this was one of the the tricks that we used to get a whole bunch at once.

But then you can see there's no more in here in this plan.

So this is the kind of thing we need to get away from buying a whole bunch of ones.

But we're paying almost four times as much then per vehicle for by leasing, no?

No, that's for multiple vehicles.

Yeah.

That's not just one vehicle.

And this was also six years ago when they were selling.

So how many vehicles?

Okay.

So okay.

So I don't and we don't need to do the math at the table, but this feels like math that we should know.

Yeah.

Right?

Or at least it would be helpful for me for just to kind of get an idea, right?

Like so this like lease versus so how many how many fire trucks, I mean how how many how many trucks do we have on this lease?

Four.

Four total for the two line items.

Five five.

Pumper and then the truck.

So five total.

Five total.

So then this three point eight five million.

Sorry, I'm gonna do a little more math.

Divided by five.

Seven hundred thousand.

Seven hundred thousand.

But like that's also combining and I uh like a an engine is a lot cheaper than an a ladder truck.

So I mean, but this seems like relevant, right?

So it does, yeah.

I mean it's versus a million to buy one, but then what's the life expectancy?

I mean you also have to consider that this was six years ago, whenever they cost like they exploded in price through the pandemic.

Okay.

I mean I'm not I'm not trying to like you know, I think it's a very I'm just saying overall it would be helpful at least for for to kind of understand you know, on all vehicle types, like when does because we're paying so much money to repair vehicles, right?

Yes.

Like so much money that and the only the only thought that I have about that is that um, you know, and again, credit to to Furman and you know people who um worked on this, is that you do sort of have to look at the whole fleet because the question of availability really matters when you've got a fire truck that's gonna take four years to get into the pipeline.

So, you know, knowing those trade-offs per vehicle type is part of what we have to understand, but we also have to understand the um you know, sort of cash flows and funding sources and so on to to operate an entire fleet.

And and I think what Pete's pointing to is that we sometimes get a little backed into perhaps not the best deal on a per vehicle type because you know what's happening to a fire truck isn't just about a fire truck.

It's also about what's happening to the ambulances, or it's about what's happening, you know, the the um it it it is again, I mean this is really just a plug for the work that Furman has done, which is to try to um put, you know, t uh time to availability into those equations and to try to so we've got this much money, we've got this fleet.

How do we arrange it to to make the best things happen that we can make happen?

And then he's got the ideal plan, which would say where would you sink money to get us into a position where the vehicle by vehicle comparisons you're making would be the only things that we would have to think about.

And if I could just for the for those specific five fire apparatus that is a municipal government, it's a lease agreement, which gives us an option to purchase buy those vehicles for a dollar at the end of a lease.

We are throughout that lease period, we are paying the full value of those vehicles.

It's not necessarily saving us money.

It's also it's it's not much different than a car loan.

A regular person would take out they call it a lease because of it being with a municipality or a nonprofit.

Um, but we are still paying all maintenance, all cost.

It just like a plus a little bit of a vehicle.

Yeah, it's it's basically a car loan, yeah.

Okay.

It's very different than the lease that Director Hornstein is proposing for other things that would which you could do that with smaller vehicles, you can't do that with a custom apparatus.

Yeah, it might be a good solution like uh for the smaller duty DPW trucks or like all of our PLI sedans, maybe it would be a good solution for that because that is that is I mean, I don't we don't have anybody from PLI here, I think, I don't think, but they will tell you they need more vehicles.

I don't think, but they will tell you they need more vehicles.

Like if they're if we expect inspectors to be out there on a day-to-day basis, they need more vehicles that they can count on working.

So and I do have a question just about this.

So I also see here that we've got 20 police SUVs on here for like 1.37 million.

Um if I recall, and I I don't remember, I don't remember where I but maybe it was ARPA funds or something, but there was and maybe it was in one of these meetings um where we bought a ton of police vehicles at one point, did we not?

Like some 370 some police I is that's a little high.

Maybe that's high.

I just remember saying some number where I was like, my wow, we really like dumped a ton of money into police vehicles.

There were 60 recently implemented, um, but those were purchased over years and Ford kept canceling and pushing our orders.

Yeah.

That was more just like a links.

So they kind of they came at once, but they weren't ordered all at once.

Yeah, we may have like doubled up the fund in one year because I think Ford straight up canceled the order that we had placed.

So like one year we didn't get any, and then we got double the amount the following year.

Yeah, the Ford had canceled, I think, twice.

Two years in a row, they canceled what we ordered.

I also note police patrol and uh regular SUVs are not in the ELA budget.

Um they are in public safety admins operating budget because they don't last the normal five year sorry span.

They're not in the capital budget.

They are in the ELA's budget, but it comes from the capital side or from the operating side, not in the capital, because they are used their lifespan is much shorter.

It has to last five years to be considered a capitalized asset.

They don't last five years.

Yeah, and it's a transfer that happens.

It's yeah.

So what are these these 20 SUVs?

I'm just because we're obviously like, you know, and I have uh I'll I'll dig into other things.

So what are these 20 SUVs for?

I would assume they're yeah.

It'd be a combination of patrols or canines or unmarked depending on the need.

Okay, so like Mr.

McDevitt stated, that's not out of the capital line items that are given to the ELA.

That is public safety admin operating.

Right.

It's an operating transfer that happens between public safety admin.

I think it's 1.3 million that gets transferred to the LA to purchase those vehicles.

So I also want to ask you just with the ordering.

What is the what is the process for what's the time, what's the time difference between like the time that we approve the money to like getting the order.

And I know it's different for getting the vehicle ultimately, like that depends on, but but what's the process for that?

I mean, I think it depends on the type of vehicle.

Um, if it's a sedan or an interceptor or whatever, we put them out to bid, we take, you know, to the dealers and we take the lowest bid for the vehicles and we place an order.

Um but if it's a specialty vehicle like a fire truck and all that, we go through a complete RFP process because they're so specialized, so that takes a lot longer.

Ideally though, so at this point we see what has been improved in the preliminary budget.

Council can change that by maybe adding more.

Um but maybe taking some away.

But at this point, we should know what is in line to be purchased.

And the fleet team can't actually issue those purchase orders until the cooperative agreement between the ELA and the city is processed.

And that is something that is done at as soon as possible, as soon as the budget is approved and um is implemented next year.

You'll see that in late January, early February.

And so at this point, hopefully we've started confirming all the specs for all those vehicles that are on the plan.

So as soon as that cooperation agreement is signed, we can start putting out purchase orders and RFPs for all those vehicles.

Because the fleet's in such bad shape, we cannot waste any time in trying to replace it.

And um we keep hearing this a lot, like specialty vehicles and and what why do we need specialty vehicles?

I mean, like what's different between a fire truck in Pittsburgh and a fire truck in Cleveland or a fire truck in I don't know, some other city that that makes us need these like super specific vehicles.

So pretty much all fire trucks are considered specialty.

There's not many that don't spec the trucks based on their own needs.

There are a few that you can get kind of a stock, but everybody customizes them to a point.

Um due to our terrain and narrow streets as well as some of our extremely old buildings, we have to make sure the apparatus will fit in the buildings.

Um everything we do is custom EMS, even their regular ambulances that the medics, the ALS trucks are also built to a spec.

Um other specialty vehicles are things like the foam trenders, um the rescue trucks, um, police have the bomb squad unit, the canine vehicle that that transports a number of canines.

We have a lot of um vehicles that aren't you can't just get off the shelf, you buy a chassis, but then everything that goes on that chassis is built kind of custom.

So so for like the fire trucks and the ambulances, they don't that doesn't come, there's not just like a standard, they like everything is built to order, no matter that's just how it's ordered.

Yeah, you can't ambulances you can buy in in like our smaller ones that we use for BLS and we use for um special events aren't as custom, they're a little more off-the-shelf, so to speak, or you know, off the lot.

Um, but they're still built to s ambulance and fire manufacturers don't build, you know, a hundred fire trucks or a hundred ambulances that are all exactly the same.

They're they build them as they're ordered, so then you always have the opportunity to build and make some adjustments to them.

Um EMS specifically this last round, we did put some new specs out and change some of that with them.

That the new ambulances are about a hundred thousand dollars less than the old ones were.

Um it's a different manufacturer, and then we got rid of some of the custom specs.

Um again, uh, Chief Coquila or others that are on the fire committee could go over how some of the things they find when you buy the commercial off-the-shelf uh or whatever you want to call it, um a stock, so to speak, stock fire truck, the longevity of that truck typically doesn't outweigh the additional things that we add around things that'll prevent rust, things that will uh reduce the need for you know, one of our fire stations, for example, when they pull in and out, they pull in and out of the apron and it's it's on a hill.

So what we've noticed is there's a lot more flex that happens every time that truck goes in and out of that station versus uh you know, a fire truck in the suburbs that wouldn't hit the volume and also wouldn't necessarily be on that.

So there's a lot of things that factor into what we do with the fire trucks and ambulances that require us to spec them.

And then we also want to make sure things are standardized so the operators know where that piece of equipment is on every, you know, whether you're at truck 18 or truck eight, right?

You know that piece of equipment is in that compartment.

So we want to make sure all of our trucks are the same.

And with the the age of the vehicle fleet, you know, you have a brand new truck or a 25-year-old truck uh it can make a big difference.

Um so I guess and I my my last question, and this is really hopefully rhetorical, we'll see.

But um just something for for council members to think about is um you know.

Well, I should ask would we be in less of a like a less dire situation if you had say 10 million dollars more for 2026?

Like double what you have here in terms of budget?

Would that be helpful?

Very much so, yes.

You think so?

Yes, please.

And you know, we obviously need these vehicles to like perform our basic services.

So I just kind of wonder, like for the public, you know, if it would be worth um in order for us to do this to like be sure that our ambulances can respond to be sure that you know potholes can get filled and just sort of like the basic, like, you know.

If it would be worth like not having any pools be open, or if it would be worth only getting our garbage picked up, maybe like every cup two weeks.

I mean, with the state of our refuse fleet, we might be headed towards that anyways without additional investment.

But yeah, I mean you're talking about basic city certain like we've talked a lot about fire and EMS for and for good reason because without competent fleets, you're talking about people's lives.

But also like we just had a snow event, and like I don't know how many times Chris has had to come to this table and answer the same questions and it's the same answer every single time.

He does not have the resources, and that means he does not have the fleet.

And that's also people's lives.

Right.

But but what I'm asking is because this is like critical, this is like public safety issue in many cases, right?

This fleet situation is a public safety issue.

But what I would ask for the public is is it worth like just not doing, I don't know, like not doing playgrounds or just you know, stopping all our recenter programming.

Or is it worth it?

Which core service is worth more?

Well, yeah.

I mean, is it worth, you know, is it worth like cutting our assistance for um low-income families like rent relief and things like that?

Is it worth cutting them out?

Is it worth um what's it worth?

What's it worth to the to the people of Pittsburgh?

Or for your average Pittsburger, is it worth being able to do all of these things to have a safe fleet that is effective or at least get closer to that to have our wonderful rec center programming to have our free summer camps to have um our pools that are free for kids every you know, to have beautiful parks, to have all the great stuff that that make our city great.

Is that worth for your average Pittsburger, right?

Like an extra maybe 180, 200 a year.

Is it worth that?

And that's really a question I think for the public.

And I uh I think it's a question for for our council members.

So that's all I have on that.

Thank you.

Uh thank you, Councilwoman.

Uh Councilman Sharlin, if you're still with us on here, but we do have councilwoman gross.

Okay.

Councilwoman Gross, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Councilman.

I'm gonna hold my questions.

I I think other members covered like every checkbox I had.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

I just had a couple of questions.

Um my first question is around you know, this idea of of 20 million annually.

Obviously, you know, if you know, we had a magic wand and was able to you know provide that 20 million dollars this year, obviously that wouldn't like solve all the the issues.

Like how many, you know, um years in succession annually um would that 20 million dollars uh need would be needed to actually get out of the hole.

So uh I guess it would that's again that's the baseline if we were in a good position.

So we're not in a good position.

So like, and again, that's just in today dollars, so the like we the cost has exploded since the pandemic, especially for um public safety vehicles, so uh every year.

Uh and it would take a dozen years maybe to turn over the entire fleet.

Um and then you would still have to keep funding it.

That's every you can't slow down on it, right if you want to do that.

Right.

You know, and and again, if you look at the plans, it you know, uh, because we bought more of these things here and those things there, and those are the lifespans, you know, it this year the you know, you would only need 17, and this year you would need 22, and this year, but but on average you would be looking at 20 million dollars a year in in today's dollars or in future dollars, you'd have to increase that into perpetuity that that would provide a city of our size attempting to provide the services that we would like to provide with the fleet tools that our employees need to do that.

But I also think you know, investing up front and you know, modernizing and and bringing our fleet more current um after you know the first couple of years, you are gonna see those operating costs of maintenance drastically decrease.

You know, I mean, we're we come here every year asking you for more to move money and find more money to repair our vehicles, and you know, it's still not enough.

Um, the rising cost of repairs, especially on these older vehicles and the lead times too of getting parts, not just for street sweepers, but uh for some of our um older, you know, garbage trucks and and things like that, you know, it's the the parts are hard to find and they're down for so long.

You know, and that drastically affects our ability to pick up trash.

Um, you know, those maintenance, you know, the shop is is you know, they're they're just they're just making it day to day.

Like what's the fire today?

You know, um is it garbage trucks?

Is it fire trucks?

Is it that you know they're just they're just out there with fire extinguishers basically, you know, just trying to stop the bleeding and and keep as much as they can on the road and it you know, I I do not envy their position.

Um in the rising costs, you know, we're we're spending fifty thousand dollars to put a new engine in a fire truck that's probably close to twenty years old.

I mean it the fire truck's probably not even worth 50,000, but we have no other choice because we need that fire truck in service.

At the people's lives.

Yeah, it's people's lives.

And and and can anyone um at the table talk about um you know, uh other cities that you know are that have been in this position, obviously we know you know, you know, revenue, you know, is in in some respects is is a silver bullet, but are there other you know, strategies and tactics that uh other cities, you know, I know you know uh Maurice, you um you know are very knowledgeable, you know, about you know our pure cities and things like that, but is there is there other kind of comprehensive strategies that you have seen cities do to begin to climb out for this whole yes uh similar cities, uh cities on similar situations have uh instituted dedicated funds and uh initiated millages uh to increase revenue, you know, specifically dedicated to fleet.

Um other municipalities are examining lease and options a little bit more um for for their fleet needs.

Um but it basically boils down to increase revenue.

And is there any particular cities that you would like to point out that we could you know in our own time look at and learn some things from?

Um I would have that in a report.

But it I believe it's uh Palm Palm Beach in Florida or excuse me if I'm I'm mistaken there, but it's uh municipality in Florida has uh dedicated one percent of sales tax revenue uh for the whole county dedicated for their fleet.

Um they've been able to drop their fleet age and increase the readiness of their public safety fleet drastically.

Um that's all I can really think of off the top of my head right now.

But yes, uh I I've done that research on it.

I like to send it to you.

Okay.

I appreciate that.

And I and I had a question and and uh director Smith, you may have of um you know touched on this.

I apologize if I missed it.

Um but is there a specific uh plan around the foam tenders that are not currently in service?

There is.

Um most of it's been around just finding the funding to make the corrections needed.

But again, cheat.

Okay.

Uh Chief Coquill can give you more details on that.

Okay.

And um and I think we got uh those numbers that you said it was like 48% of fire vehicles are past their useful life cycle.

Is that the verbiage we got from the director?

Um and another question is how does the authority prioritize fire trucks compared to cars, SUVs, and other not non-emergency vehicles?

Is there a certain kind of rationale or rubric that that's use?

I firm I cannot stress how great like as the person who used to do like the prioritization stuff when I was an asset management analyst, Furman has taken it leaps and bounds beyond what it was.

So he's created those weighted measures that that have those like opportunity costs and and what those vehicles are are meant to do and the value of that uh to take that into consideration whenever the LA is trying to prioritize its requests.

Um like Councilwoman Gross said, I think a lot of my um questions that I had at top of mind and you know have been asked.

I think that exhausts uh my questions I want to you know offer back.

I don't know if councilwoman well, councilman gross says he didn't have councilwoman Warwick.

Um do you have any additional follow-up?

I don't questions.

I want to wish you a wonderful you know holiday season.

And um, if there are no other questions, can I have a motion to recess this meeting?

Sorry, so moved.