Hello and welcome to Pittsburgh City Council's budget hearings.

Um, Councilman Lavell and I'll share the Committee of Hearings and Policy this afternoon.

We are going to hear from the Office of the Mayor.

First, I would like to turn it over to our budget director to provide an overview, and then we'll turn it over to those here from the mayor's office.

Thank you, Council President.

The mission of the Office of the Mayor is to provide leadership, strategic direction, and administrative oversight to all aspects of city government operations and to develop and implement policy reflective of the goals and priorities of the citywide community.

The Office of Mayor contains the following offices the executive office, the Office of Communications, Office of Neighborhood Services, the Office of Business Diversity, the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, and the Office of Workforce Development, Youth and Education.

And just a note, the Office of Equal Protections was moved to its own cost center in the 2026 budget.

Quick position summary.

There is a total of 14 full-time positions in the 2026 general fund for the mayor's office.

That is 25 less than in 2025.

And just to note, 15 of those were moved to other departments.

So overall, that is a decrease of about 1.7 million dollars.

And then a summary of non-personnel changes.

Overall, there is about uh 1.18 million dollar decrease in the non-personnel budget.

Uh that includes $855,000 less for professional and technical services, $300,000 for property services, um, that's city cuts.

Um $360,000 less for printing and binding and a little bit less for supplies.

And in the capital budget, uh similar to city council, there's only one line in CDBG funding for uh mayor's office public service grants.

And that's all I have.

Thank you.

With that, uh please introduce yourself for the records.

Sure.

They just just for members, they do have a presentation that's currently being printed, so we'll have it out for you shortly.

Thank you, Council President.

Um Kyle Chinalopley, I serve as Chief of Staff to Mayor Ganey and uh Chief Economic Development Officer for the City.

Felicity Williams, I serve as Deputy Chief of Staff for Mayor Ganey.

Happy to be here with you guys today.

All right.

And Pete, am I good to now share the presentation?

Wonderful.

All right.

We are up and running.

So thank you guys for joining us today.

We just uh introduced or having having us here with you all today.

We just introduced ourselves.

Uh we are here today with you to review some accomplishments for uh 2025 with a key eye towards items uh that either have future policy or future budgetary uh implications, not the totality of accomplishments for the the mayor's office.

We are going to uh Chief Tintilopli is going to provide an overview of the mayor's office budget for FY26, and then of course, we're here to answer any questions that you all might have on the mayor's office budget.

Uh similarly, therefore, our agenda is as follows.

I will give a quick overview of the mayor's office.

Pete kind of walked through the teams, but I will highlight a little bit of the work that those teams do generally uh before jumping into, as I mentioned, those key accomplishments with that eye towards things that would have a future policy or budgetary uh implication that we think this body would be interested in.

And then Kyle will hand it over to cover budget overview and do any QA.

So, starting with an overview of the mayor's office, as mentioned, we have an executive office within there who is focused on things such as uh operations, obviously in partnership with um our our HR department and office of management and budgets, operations specific to the mayor's office, of course, not citywide operations.

Uh several strategic initiatives, one of which you will hear about today related to our procurement modernization, uh staffing for the LGBTQIA Plus Commission as well as the Gender Equity Commission, executive support uh for the mayor as well as our chief and myself deputy chief, um, intergovernmental affairs and external institutional relationship management.

Our communications team is focused related to strategic communication plans uh and execution on behalf of the entire uh city of Pittsburgh, so both the mayor's office and our city departments.

Uh press engagement and relationship management, digital communications, and crisis communications.

Think the fantastic work that they did after the April 2025 severe weather event where we had, I believe it was daily press briefings and other communications to help keep all of our residents informed.

You have our neighborhood services team who houses who did house 311.

They provide technical assistance to the mayor's office and city departments, so citywide for engagement planning and execution, constituent services, and a few programs, think Snow Angels, as well as a major events like City in the Streets, a digital newsletter newsletter in our engage PGH management.

The Office of Business Diversity staffs and manages our Equal Opportunity Review Commission.

They do MWDBE, LGBTQBE, and VOSB tracking and compliance, as well as engagement with those diverse business entities.

Immigrant refugee affairs focuses on language access, cultural inclusion, so things like the International Day Parade and Mother Language Day.

They have a network of welcoming communities that is inclusive of intergovernmental partners as well as community-based organizations throughout the city that meet monthly on matters of inclusion and access for our immigrant and refugee communities.

We just recently completed an audit and certification with the national welcoming community certification, which I will uh share a little bit more about as well in the presentation.

And they provide technical assistance to departments on immigrant inclusion and accessibility for government services.

Our workforce development youth and education team focuses on the strategy and management of the Learn and Earn partnership.

The actual budget for Learn and Earn to partner for work and the review of eligibility for applicants is done with HR, but the strategy and relationship management as an external institution with Partner for Work in the County is done through this team and in the mayor's office.

Youth Civic Engagement, you all recently passed legislation making amendments to the youth commission, which you will hear me talk a little bit about more as well.

Things like our youth civic leadership academy, as well as internships and budget and public service grant engagement with youth.

They also have led our partnership with PPS and have participated in the work related to the Pittsburgh Workforce Hub.

Lastly, our equal protection team focuses on paid sick leave, disruptive properties appeals, disability rights, including our ADA transition plan, which again you will hear more about shortly in the presentation, supporting us in making sure that we are returning all of our RTKs, ethics compliance, and policy support.

All right.

Moving through to a couple 2025 key accomplishments, very similar to things that you have heard throughout the city.

After over a decade of deferred maintenance, we needed to undertake asset management and assessment.

That doesn't just include bridges for things like you've heard our bridge asset management program.

There's also catch-up work that we needed to do looking at systems, including customer service, procurement, and accessibility.

And again, you're gonna hear some more about that, but that's an overarching theme that I was thought was important to highlight to you and will come through in this presentation.

So starting with the ADA transition plan review, overview, excuse me.

We launched a comprehensive Air Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA transition plan.

Title II of the ADA requires all state and local government programs, services, and activities to be accessible and provide equal opportunity for people with disabilities.

This covers spaces uh like physical spaces like buildings and parks, as well as digital access.

This is the first uh plan since the early 1990s, so this is the first one of its kind in over 30 years.

Again, that theme of uh deferred maintenance or some catch-up work to do.

The project has currently assessed over 250 public facilities and begun auditing digital properties for accessibility.

Uh we're expected to be over 75 cons 75% complete, excuse me, by the end of this year.

And you all should have received, and if you didn't, I will make sure that Anne Marie sends that to you directly, our upcoming virtual event on Monday, December 15th, which will cover the first findings from Pittsburgh's ADA transition plan and self-assessment.

Why is it important for me to highlight this work with you all, as I mentioned, looking at what are some future policy and budgetary implications.

Once this study is complete, the city will need to begin corrective actions to address identified accessibility barriers.

This phase will require integration with capital planning and tracking systems for long-term implementation.

Right now, our approach to ADAA has been more reactive.

So either when we are DPW largely is taking on a new project, we will incorporate that into that work, or in response to a complaint or litigation.

We want to be much more proactive as a city for disability rights and disability inclusion, and we want to also have a comprehensive overview that will help us be able to prioritize where and how we should deploy our resources smartly.

And that is what this will do.

So this will continue after our administration, but we've completed about 75% of it.

And as I said, there'll be some future policy and budgetary implications for you all to consider.

Moving forward.

Next, I mentioned briefly about our welcoming audit and certification.

The welcoming standard is a national standard that evaluates city policies and programs across seven key areas, measuring how effectively they promote inclusion and belonging for all.

Over the past year, we have been preparing for and undergoing an external evaluation by a national organization called Welcoming America.

We are excited and thrilled.

We announced last month at an event that we were rated three out of five stars for our efforts to be a welcoming and supportive city for immigrant residents.

I'm really proud of the work that the Office of Immigrant Refugee Affairs did here because when the audit first came back, we were only at two stars.

And so they did the work with our departments internally in partnership to ensure that we got to that three-star certification.

We were previously certified under the Welcoming America system.

However, it was either you were certified or you weren't.

There was no tiered system, there was no starred system in that process.

There, of course, great that we were three out of five stars.

We're one of only nine cities in the country with this designation or higher.

However, there's still opportunities for improvement.

Where this comes to you all again in terms of policy or budgetary implications in the future, we will need to develop a comprehensive strategy, not just the city, but our partners.

This assessment does not just look at the city of Pittsburgh, it looks at community-based organizations as well as the entire ecosystem.

So it looks at PPS, Allegheny County, Partner for Work, so on and so forth.

And we will need to look at how we use that to guide efforts to make public services and resources more effective and accessible.

Next on our list here, the Pittsburgh Regional Disparity Study.

Hopefully, you all have heard about this before.

I know I certainly have sent you all some direct email communications about it.

But similarly to the ADA transition plan, in which it was the first in over 30 years, this is the first in over 20 years.

This study is also joined by the largest group of public agencies in our history to help us understand where disparities exist, how our marketplace is functioning, and what changes are necessary to ensure that our public spending is fair, competitive, and growth oriented.

This is the foundation, the legal foundation to support our business diversity programs.

This is not a study that we are doing because we're just curious, we would like to have it.

It is legally required to maintain our business diversity programs across each of these public agencies.

Given the heightened scrutiny from the by the Trump administration and ongoing attacks related to DEI, MWDBE and DBE programs nationwide, failure to complete a robust study, puts our region's programs at real risk of elimination.

This is also a requirement in our city code to complete a disparity study every five years.

So again, that theme that there was some catch-up work that we needed to do related to some of our systems and processes as a city.

This study is being conducted by MGT, a nationally recognized leader.

They also have local subcontractors partnering with them in this effort.

I am not going to go through every single bullet on the screen there of what this will do.

But I also want to highlight a important component of this disparity study that is an economic impact analysis that will evaluate how supplier diversity, business diversity, and related programs impact competition, job creation, revenue growth, and tax generation, all of which directly affect our region's business climate here in the city.

Where we are right now, in progress, you will see a list of items that are currently underway.

Again, similar to the ADA transition plan, this will have to be completed by the incoming administration.

There are opportunities to get engaged right now.

I'm actually in conversation with our vendor to in the new year work with you all to ensure that they have engagement events in each of your council districts, ensuring that all of the businesses, the vendors that are residents of your districts get an opportunity to participate and engage in this study.

For those of you that are interested in learning more about it, again, I'm not going to read through all the sub bullets here, but I'm happy to answer questions and engage with you, in fact, offline to get more involved.

You can, of course, stay updated and engaged throughout the uh utilizing uh the disparity study webpage there.

There are links to participate in the engagement opportunities.

There's also resources listed there as well.

Why does this matter to this body again from a policy and budgetary implications perspective?

Uh we will be completing this study in summer of 2026.

There will be a public release with community engagement opportunities, and we will have to develop an implementation plan.

The legal requirement here is not just to complete this study, but then to also implement the recommendations from the study.

If your business diversity program is not specifically tailored, that is the legal requirement by the Supreme Court.

If it is not specifically tailored to the results of the study, your program is not legally compliant.

And so we will need to execute on those recommendations, which may at some point require budgetary and policy implications for you all.

Related to this, uh, although the disparity study is the legal foundation, we know that again our city is a little behind in these efforts, and so we ran a parallel track not to wait until we completed uh the disparity study because there would be such a volume of work that came out of it that we needed to do.

We uh started implementing necessary changes that we knew uh needed to uh occur.

So in 2023, we launched a procurement modernization overview.

This is a cross-functional team represented from procurement, OMB, law, office of its diversity, office of equal protection, the mayor's office, and the Department of Innovation and Performance.

We meet weekly to advance and drive this initiative.

We are uh goals from this are increased transparency, standardization, and fairness in the city's contracting processes.

You all may not be aware of this, you might be aware of it.

Uh we used to have a decentralized procurement system here in the city of Pittsburgh.

This is long before uh our administration took office.

The city made the choice to centralize that procurement system.

However, uh, that transition was never fully completed, and so we still have lots of opportunities to standardize policies and process that will need to be continued.

Particularly looking at uh aligning with city code and best practices.

As some examples of the work we have done to date, uh we strengthened internal standards for preparation and advertisement of prebid meetings.

Previously, there was no requirement to have a prebid meeting unless the funding source required that we had one.

We now have a standard for that.

We've updated some of our contract language related to our vendors.

As I mentioned to you already, we launched the disparity study, and we've uh begun aligning our processes with both dormant provisions of city code and best practices across the country.

That work is ongoing.

Most recently, we expanded post-award compliance and monitoring with the Office of Equal Protection.

Uh sorry, Office, the Equal Opportunity Review Commission, excuse me.

Uh, and we improved how we evaluate disadvantaged business participation on all invitation for bid projects.

I'm uh not gonna go through the high-level details of how we did that here.

I included this for your reference if anyone is interested in having and engaging in this conversation more deeply.

Uh, I am happy to do so.

Again, a lot of these changes that we are making are ensuring that we strengthen and protect not only our procurement process but our economic inclusion efforts uh that we have as a city.

This slide as well, which again is included for your reference, and I'm happy to return to wanted to highlight a little bit of the results from this work.

Uh, this was the initial pilot, so we will need to continue to do this work to see if the results hold, but we have some pretty amazing results on this pilot.

Uh, overall across the Brighton Heights Healthy Active Living Center project, we have 34% DBE participation.

On the GC contract, we had 18.2% spread across MBE and WBE.

Um, on plumbing and HVAC, we had 25% spread across MBE and WBE.

And then on the electric uh contract, it was 100% DBE spread between MBE, WB, and VOSB.

So exciting early results.

We look forward to continuing this progress.

Next on my list is our learn and earn cooperation agreement, which was executed uh just this year and will extend through 2027.

We actually have been working uh with uh partner for work and then um the Inamorado administration at the county related to revamping the Learn and Earn program.

Uh this renewed agreement outlined some shared governance and stronger accountability mechanisms.

It also made some programmatic changes, things that we had heard from uh city council members that you all were interested in seeing.

We also engaged uh young people, we've engaged some of the providers and regional stakeholders, Councilman Lavell.

I happen to serve as the mayor's uh representative on the Learn Earn Advisory Committee, Councilman Lavelle serves as the city council representative on the Learn and Earn Advisor Advisory Committee, and we've been uh honored and happy to have his support in doing a lot of these uh different changes.

Again, I'm not gonna run through every single one of these bullets, but if you are interested in diving more deeply into that, I am happy to do so.

Again, more specifically, one of the reasons that I wanted to include this here is that there may be ongoing uh policy uh and of course funding obligations related to um the learning earn cooperation agreement.

Again, the actual funding source is that we contribute is not housed within the mayor's office budget, that is housed within uh HR's budget, but uh we lead the contract negotiations, strategy development, and relationship management uh with the partners for this.

Next, one that I know you all have been interested in is our CRM implementation.

Uh again, same themes of having uh systems that were quite outdated or had not had much attention paid to them in quite some time.

This is the first new CRM system in 10 years for the city.

Uh, and so we launched that in 2025.

As you all are aware, there have been some challenges with launching a new software platform citywide, uh, the first one in a decade that we have been working through.

There are some exciting benefits that we have identified here as well.

As I mentioned, you'll see as a last bullet.

We are continuing to work through uh that implementation and rollout.

More specifically, where we are in terms of progress.

We are deploying uh the licenses that you all authorize the funding to be able to support.

So thank you again for your partnership in that.

Most specifically, those are authorizing licenses uh mostly to DPW and public safety.

Uh, in terms of again, things that this body should be aware of in terms of future phases of development uh to build on the capabilities of the Salesforce platform and allow for more meaningful city constituent relations.

It's gonna be dependent on continued investment in that system.

One of the things that was um proposed uh in the budget, um, I believe it's in INP's budget is some professional development and training to close expertise gaps internally so that we can develop our own expertise related to the Salesforce platform.

Uh there are also some opportunities for product enhancements.

Again, these are things that you all may want to consider in the future at some point.

Uh Accenture, who is the vendor, has been responsive to addressing uh functionality challenges that we had with the initial rollout.

We had over a hundred uh tickets with them.

We're down to about only nine open tickets, but some of the remaining uh enhancement requests are city specific and either require us to have enhanced internal expertise or would require um additional budget uh to implement.

So things for you all to be aware of.

Uh lastly, here to cover our youth commission.

Uh, again, because you all just authorized this.

Uh I've included the content here for your reference, but I will not go through it in at length.

Uh we the last step we have had in this process is recruiting over 50 young people that are interested in serving.

We look forward to turning over that information to the incoming administration, where we have laid the groundwork and the opportunity for them to finalize on uh appointments and launch operations of the city's youth commission.

And with that, I will turn it over to Chief Chintilopoli to cover our budget overview.

Thank you.

Um I mean, Pete went over the the big changes as it relates to overall and then the aggregate.

Um I think broadly, just as background, you know, as it says on the slide, our team did take a review, you know of our expenditures to identify opportunities for savings, um, really in line with some of the same tough choices that um departments have been wrestling with and had to make those positions that you know were more aligned with our priorities, um, looking at those is the focus for any removals, knowing that an incoming administration you know is going to reshape the mayor's office.

I think to that end, um, you know, overall the aggregate numbers in line with uh where the mayor's office funding had been um in 2022 prior to the Guinea administration, um, and I think that was done um in preparation of for the preliminary budget, um, just noting what was being said, you know, in sort of the public arena um you know through the campaign around the size of the mayor's office and then returning it to what it had been again, realizing that in the end um the now, as we know, incoming O'Connor administration will um have you know amendments that they're gonna want to see in order to have the office structured in the way that they would like.

So with that, um I think we'll conclude our presentation and open it up for questions.

Absolutely, thank you.

Thank you.

We can go uh down the line, Councilman Schlossberger.

Thank you.

I will save some time by just stating that um I don't have any questions at this time.

I'll see if any come up based on my colleagues' comments or questions.

And just wanted to compliment you on your work on the um particularly on the procurement and um DBE accomplishments and the I know it's ongoing, but the regional disparity study, um, really excellent work, so thank you.

But I don't have any questions at this time.

Thank you, Council Wilson.

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks for being here.

I did want to ask some questions.

Sure.

Uh so I'm counting uh 11.

One, two, three, seven eleven.

It'll be in transfer from the mayor's office to a different department, but it says 15.

Is that just because we're still getting some information?

There may be I don't know what the sheet that you have, but based on the budget, uh, there may be multiple of one position.

Uh multiple one.

Yeah, I see five.

Because the majority of it is a bulk of them are three one.

We used to look into the left gong.

Thanks.

Yep.

Okay.

All right.

And then so the overall it's a decrease in the mayor's office of 3.3 million dollars, roughly.

And you're saying, can you repeat?

I think you're alluding to this in your comments.

And what's the reason for such a dramatic decrease of 3.3 million?

I mean, I think some of it is as noted through through position transfers, you know, notably with 311.

So those positions are still within the city, are still gonna function um the way that they have.

Um, and then some of the ones that were supporting departments directly, um, you know, are transferring to those departments.

I said it broadly, you know, if we look back to when the preliminary budget is is due, um, you know, at that point there's there's not a mayor elect, right?

So we're basing what the what to do off of um comments that are being made in the public and what we felt was responsible to do given the concerns that were raised, you know, through those conversations and the camp respective campaigns about the size to um return in in overall sort of aggregate form um the amount within the budget back to what it had been, you know, or commensurate with what it had been in 22.

So I see when you look at the jobs.

Why does one like pops out of me?

Why would 311 be put into OMB?

I think that the you know you I know you have OMB tomorrow as well.

I think the the thought process being it's more of an administrative function than where was it before?

It was an IMP and then it moved to the mayor's office and it's a proposed mayor's proposed to move to O and B O and B.

So the idea being that um when we took office, again, as Kyle mentioned, we also realigned things that were our priorities.

The idea being we took office is that uh the mayor's office being a space in which innovative concepts uh were incubated, and so we incubated the concept related to how to improve the work of uh 311 and coordinate that and better integrate that with operations as that has evolved over time and it has grown, it makes sense to place that 311 team within the office of management and budget, the management component of that being city operations.

So ensuring that it is further integrated into the operations and helping to um be an information loop with our operations as well.

Thanks for your explanation.

Appreciate that.

And then I see professional services is reduced dramatically here, and like so what are what does the mayors always use professional services for?

Because I see it went from 270, 276,000 to 888,000, almost a million, and then now it's being left with 57,000.

Correct.

So as I mentioned, uh the Pittsburgh Regional Disparity Study, the city made a large contribution to that to cover it over a multi-year project.

We also have each member of the public partners who are participating in that making financial contributions to the study.

And so that's why you saw that number increase so high.

It was largely due to that Pittsburgh Regional Disparity Study.

We no longer have financial obligations that we need to put new money into the budget for.

And so that's why you see that dramatic drop.

Okay.

And then the landscaping line.

City cuts.

Okay, that's city cuts.

Where were city cuts before?

So that will go away.

City cuts would go away.

Because there's no there's nothing in there.

Correct.

And where was that really?

I don't have to do interrogatory, but that was that was on council side before.

I don't believe it was on council side before.

Um I can't speak to where it would be administered.

I think it may have been previously under the Office of Community Affairs, which was actually housed in the city planning.

Um prior, and then it moved over to the mayor's office.

At some point it was also in DPW.

In 2019, I I was able to look it up real quick.

In 2019, for example, it was in DPW operations.

Yeah.

It was in DPW, okay.

Was that in DBW this year?

No.

For the okay, so that was why that was cut and not moved like you're doing in other scenarios here.

It was just a cost saving measure.

Yeah.

Tightening our belts.

Okay.

All right, thanks.

Thank you.

Councilman Mosley.

Yeah, um, I don't think I have any questions right at the moment, but I do want to you know, thank you, you know, for your service to the city.

It's been enjoyable to work with both of you in you know, different lanes, so to speak.

Um, worked with you much on economic development projects.

Um and district now, you've been you know a great partner well as a good sounding board.

You know, um, and um, you know, just want to you know thank you, looking forward um to a bright future, you know, for you, and I'm sure you know our cross are gonna pass, you know, again in you know, and in other chapters and other realms, but I just want to take this opportunity for the record to thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for the work we've done together with the stop the violence fund.

Absolutely um, as well as the work around procurement and ensuring um you know that we are uh providing opportunities for a diverse range uh of entrepreneurs and folks in the business realm.

And again, you know, wish you the best.

Thank you.

Yep, thank you.

That concludes my comments.

Thank you.

Councilman Sherlin.

Thank you, Council President.

Uh thank you guys for being here.

Sure.

I I really only have uh one question for you, and I just I'm curious what we are to make as a as a body here uh with the mayor breaking the precedent of showing up to uh be at his own budget hearing here.

What how how should we receive that?

I mean I I don't know that Mayor Janey has attended you know the previous budget hearings um we did make a pretty big deal about that last year, and we were told that he would be here this year.

Okay, okay.

I wasn't aware of that, so I apologize.

Um yeah, I mean, you know, he he obviously came and shared his thoughts as it relates to the budget with the budget address, um, you know, and did that with council and um you know we're here today um you know, in order to have this conversation with you.

So do you know that we should feel about that in terms of his relationship with council here in this kind of the most important part of the legislative year?

I wouldn't uh the mayor is the CEO of the entire city.

Uh he doesn't come to if we were to take that approach, he would need to be at every single budget hearing there for OMB, every single department.

He is the CEO of the city.

So the same way that you have a director who shows up to those budget hearings, you have Kyle and I, or an assistant directors.

Kyle and I are the equivalent of director and assistant directors for the mayor's office.

He is not in attendance at any of those.

So he's taken we've taken the position that that is the same approach here.

So I would not say it's indicative of any relationship um uh uh with city council.

It it certainly is a break from precedent and you know should be acknowledged there.

So with that, that's really all I have.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you, Councilman Smith.

Thank you.

And I'm just gonna pick up on that.

Um first of all, I do thank you for being here.

And it is a very uncomfortable situation.

We this is the mayor's budget hearing, it's it's not his staff's, it's not his office.

They always do have their staff there to you know answer the questions.

And we did have a time where he was not going to be here, and Director McDevitt had found out, and I said then we'll cancel the meeting because it's his hearing.

And then he did come in for a few minutes so that we could.

Um but I will say that I I don't blame I this is a very uncomfortable time in it for all of us.

And so I don't I don't I know and it's just no how it feels right now.

And so I mean I I'm gonna get ready to leave, and it's hard to be here, to be honest with you.

So um with that said, I just want to know um, you know, you're hearing all these things, and this is what I would have asked the mayor had he been here.

You're hearing all these things about the budget, and there's a lot of cuts in in the mayor's office.

How do you think that um you would have operated differently and do you think that these cuts are appropriate for the incoming administration that some of the cuts you know in terms of personnel?

Let me talk to me a little bit about how you uh you think he they should operate the same.

Why was it so necessary for you to have these large numbers and not for him?

Could you explain that a little bit?

I think I want to reiterate uh just to start off and then I'll I'll pass it to Kyle reiterate something that that uh Chief Chintilopoli said was that uh these posit a lot most of the positions are not actually cut.

They have been transferred to departments.

So we do have cuts um that we feel were appropriate given the fact that we were also asking our departments to do the same.

We did not think it would be respectful for us to not also take those same measures ourselves.

But the majority of what you see as quote unquote cuts are not are not cuts.

Those positions are transferred right to other departments, which still creates the opportunity for the incoming administration to shape the mayor's office however they see fit, which we thought is appropriate.

As Kyle mentioned, uh we returned the mayor's based on rhetoric uh and that we had heard in from both camps in the campaign, we returned the mayor's office uh largely to the size of when we took office, it's actually we uh left the budget higher um than when we took office, actually than what we received incoming as administration, but gave a framework that then the incoming administration could and should shape as they see fit.

So you felt that when you came in though, those positions were necessary in for this administration to function to have them in the office of the mayor, but now you think that they're not so necessary.

So in that position.

Sure.

So certain things, as we mentioned, were aligned with priorities that we had as an administration.

Uh each administration should get an opportunity to do that.

Uh I also mentioned to you what had been our philosophy and approach that certain things would be incubated within the mayor's office, but we never intended them to stay in the mayor's office forever.

Uh the idea being that we would help provide that strategy, that innovation um to help uh do process improvements, for example, uh, and then they would spin off and have their own life, whether that be internally in city departments, or whether that may even be things that live on with external partners who may be better suited to carry them forward long term.

And so as you're hearing about people talking about the budget and the tax possible 30% tax increase, and so and our residents are um you know extremely upset and rightfully so.

Can I ask um I know the mayor didn't took a stand that he did not want to raise taxes, and I appreciate that.

But how does he do you believe and does he believe that this budget is accurate and that we're able to that it reflects the th the cost of the the city has going forward?

Do you think that it's an accurate budget and that we're there's not a need to raise taxes, or do you think that there's a need to raise taxes?

What would it be his stance on this?

Sure, sure.

Yeah, I mean I think the mayor spoke about the budget, you know, in the budget address, saying that you know he feels this is what delivers the core services for the city, you know, avoids layoffs and avoids a tax increase.

Um I think as you know, in the conversations the council had, you know, if if it is something that the body determines they want to raise taxes or make further cuts, we're willing to engage in those conversations and have expressed that, you know, in in different convers and different opportunities um to council leadership since the preliminary budget was introduced in September.

Um so we're willing to engage in those discussions um, you know, with with the body.

Yes.

So can I tell you where I am with this?

I I I'm watching all the political grandstanding and everything that's happening between you know tax increases, you know, willow councils, all those sorts of things.

And I really think it would be beneficial for the public is if we all sat down and had some real conversations.

And I don't think that they should be behind closed doors.

I think the public needs to understand what's really happening.

And so uh for me, that's what I would advocate for is that um the public knows why we're making the decisions we're making.

These are their dollars, they're not ours.

And we're acting like you know, we're using them as if they're our own, you know, personal you know, accounts, and they're not.

And so I just want to make sure that we're doing the best we can, whether we agree or not agree on political statements or political, you know, the pandering and things that are occurring.

I think we have a right and and a responsibility to do what's best for the residents of the city of Pittsburgh, and that's to work together for a budget that's everybody's more agreeable that will work better without increasing taxes to the amount that that we're hearing, at least to the amount we're hearing.

I don't want to increase them at all.

But I I mean I actually think that there's some places that we could cut back, and heck, I'd take out some whole departments if I could, but um, but with that said, I would think it's it's worth the conversations.

So thank you.

Thank you.

I just have one question.

Um in your presentation, you laid out sort of the next steps for the disparity study and the work that has to continue on as it relates to the procurement modernization.

Do you have thoughts, recommendations on what needs to happen moving forward to see that work truly get fulfilled as well?

Absolutely.

So one of the things that we both have as a benefit of the disparity study uh with our national vendor is that we have a strategist and thought partner who can help us work through these things as the chaos of Washington is unfolding uh daily.

Um and so we have been along with our law department keeping an eye on uh movements of what is happening across the country, whether that be with cities across the country, um partner cities like Philadelphia or cities like St.

Louis.

Um we use the city of St.

Louis as an example in which they um were in the process they had completed a disparity study in 2024.

They had not, however, done the second half, as I mentioned to you all is critical, which is then not let the study just sit on a shelf.

You have to actually implement the recommendations and adjust your programs.

Um they paused their program until they had implemented the recommendations for the disparity study, and now their program is um back up and running.

Um so that just underscores an example in which you can have a legally compliant uh MWDBE, DBE, business diversity, whatever term you want to call it program under a Trump administration.

Um I think we need to be very mindful also of the separation of powers um between federal, state, and local, and that there is tremendous local power for uh procurement um authority, which leads me to some of the next steps.

Um I have been in conversation, of course, with our law department as well as Councilman Lavelle and Councilman uh Mosley related to what are some uh code uh changes that we need to see here in the city of Pittsburgh to protect um and strengthen not only our procurement process generally to ensure that uh we have more standardized policy and process, but also specifically our economic inclusion efforts.

And so I would recommend that we uh take some of those legislative actions to bring those changes um to our our system again to protect it when we look at uh Philadelphia, um our law department met with them uh and changes that they made.

Uh it is imperative that we take these legislative actions prior to any sort of litigation.

Um I have been in conversation uh with uh Councilman Lavell about uh convening a uh stakeholder briefing.

Uh what I'm not sure quite the appropriate council forum with you all related to this.

Um it would probably have to be an executive session given the topic of some of the information that uh we would be sharing with you all um to ensure that we are taking those proactive steps to protect economic inclusion efforts here as a city, along with completing the Pittsburgh Regional Disparity City.

As I mentioned, uh our procurement process um still needs to complete quite a bit of transition away from being a decentralized process to a much more standardized centralized process.

Uh one of the changes that we made earlier as administrative policies I mentioned was rewriting the review and selection or sorry, not rewriting, creating a review and selection policy so that we had a standardized process in writing for how to guide uh review and selection of invitation for bid solicitations, which is just one type of solicitation.

So we have that now as administrative policy, but there are components of that that we should be integrating into our city code, things related to pre-bid requirements.

Again, as I mentioned, we have done that through administrative policy, but we have no requirement in our city code to even ensure that we are fairly and publicly advertising um MW uh business opportunities with the city of Pittsburgh.

Um so those are some of the things that we have been in conversation with.

Again, I spend every week with our law department, every week with that procurement modernization team.

We have a session uh monitoring and working through this.

I also meet with our disparity study consultants every two weeks, and then the consortium body of public partners every month related to these efforts.

And so engaging them on that, those are some real uh recommendations that we undertake and that we undertake soon because we see things happening very quickly across the country.

Thank you.

Um so towards that end, I would just ask that we we have another sort of series of meetings where we can actually look at what those the codification into code of the policies would actually look like to strengthen our program.

It's worth noting that you mentioned um you can't indeed have these programs even in the era of a Trump administration.

Right.

And then one of the reasons that can exist is because I know with the disparity study and some of the procurement modernization, we've moved away from race specific language, gender-specific language, but rather criteria of these are the things that sort of specify where investment is needed, where the businesses that need additional city dollars go, which I think also should be codified in code.

Right.

So sorry, on what time we have left.

I would certainly be look forward to working with you on that towards the end of the year.

Um anything that cannot be accomplished by then, I'd be more than willing to work with Councilman Mosley, he's been working on, I'm sure others are interested in this work as well to carry it through into next year.

Um other question.

Sure.

How important how important is it for our authorities to also get on board with this?

Okay, yes.

Um taking a step back.

So the value of the real value that we have as public partners, we are just individually one slice of economic opportunity in our region.

But if you think about the volume of things that we contract for, the city of Pittsburgh is hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

If you look at our capital budget, right, that is almost entirely distributed through procurement.

So if you add the city of Pittsburgh along with all of our other agencies and partners, we have tremendous uh power as public agencies to shape and influence um economic opportunity in our region.

Uh the more people have good quality jobs, the more people have business opportunities, uh, the healthier the economy of our our region is, and we know that one of the greatest public safety strategies is economic opportunity, and these are intricately tied.

We look at rec at examples across the country where people have done tremendous things with um public contracting as an opportunity because again, as you said, councilwoman uh Kale Smith, I'll highlight that, these are not our personal dollars, these are public dollars, and so we have an obligation to ensure that those public dollars are spent in a way that does not discriminate that creates and opens up access and economic opportunity um for all.

So it is imperative that not only the city of Pittsburgh undertake these changes, but a lot of our uh partner agencies as well as our governmental bodies have also quite outdated procurement uh policies and practices.

Again, that is why this is the first disparity study in over 20 years, looking back on data that is about 30 years old.

So think about saying we're anywhere from 20 to 30 years behind.

That is not just the city of Pittsburgh, that is all of us as public partners, whether that be the URA, the housing authority, Allegheny County, Pittsburgh Water, et cetera, they are all in this disparity study um here with us and participating for that reason.

I would also though encourage that because we are so far behind, those authorities, those other agency partners cannot wait.

Uh again, what we are seeing is that if you wait until after litigation to make some of these changes, uh you are less likely to be successful in preserving your programs.

And so it is imperative that if we really believe in economic inclusion and economic opportunity, that those partner agencies, our other governmental partners get on board and adopt some of the exact same processes that we have here at the City of Pittsburgh, ensuring, as Councilman Lovell said, that uh our process is standardized, it is tight, that we are following best practices, and that we have found um strategic ways to also uh use some race and gender neutral opportunities, specifically Councilman Lavell is referring to our regional uh workforce equity agreement, in which we want to ensure that local uh city of Pittsburgh residents have opportunities to work on projects that are publicly funded by the city of Pittsburgh.

In particular, we want to look at um folks who come from disadvantaged uh economically disadvantaged areas or extreme need and high need neighborhoods as designated by the Allegheny County Community Needs Index, ensuring that they are paid a prevailing wage, ensuring that they have job quality requirements, and ensuring that there are training pipelines through apprenticeships on uh city-funded public projects.

This is a model that we have developed in partnership not just with uh our law department, but national experts in this space.

The city of Pittsburgh has actually been featured um nationally for the work that we are doing here.

Um the state Pennsylvania Black Legislative Caucus has recognized the work that Pittsburgh is doing here as well.

They are ready to adopt models by any of those public agencies and partners, and they should be urgently looking to adopt those if they want to ensure that public dollars are spent for public good, more than just ensuring that a building gets built, but that the benefit of those contract opportunities are shared with all Pittsburghers.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Smith.

Yeah, I just want to talk about when you said you have a committee that you work on.

Yes.

Who's on that committee?

Uh so we have representatives um from um the law department from our procurement team from OMB, the deputy mayor himself serves on that with me.

I am the executive sponsor uh for this work, um, Department of Innovation and Performance, um, Office of Equal Protection, Office of Business Diversity.

I think I covered everybody.

So it is a pretty broad and sweeping team.

We also engage with our departments directly.

For example, some of the uh changes that we made to um the invitation for bid because those largely involve predominantly construction contracts.

We engaged with DPW on helping to shape and inform and incorporate things that they wanted to see as process improvements in our procurement system.

I I think when we talk about diversity in the city of Pittsburgh, we don't really include all types of diversity.

And I really wish that we would look at that a little bit more in depth.

I know when we were doing the you know women and minority contracting, I added veterans.

Sure.

But I mean, as I hear people talking about bike lanes and different infrastructure, I hear from the disabled community that they feel like their voice isn't heard.

So I always feel like we're always missing somebody when these we have these conversations.

And I just want to know how we would how if you could have it like perfect, how would you and how would you be more inclusive to include more voices in something like this as well?

So I think that is one of the things that we have done through the ADA transit or are attempting to do or in process of doing with the ADA transition plan.

Right.

So looking at ensuring that there was inclusion with our disability community.

Um the office uh that leads that plan uh out of the mayor's office, Office of Equal Protection, is also at the table with our procurement modernization efforts.

So they are ensuring that we are um inclusive of that of that thinking uh in our uh procurement changes as well.

So that's one example.

Um we are also governed uh tremendously by uh Supreme Court and other court precedent for this space is highly regulated.

Um we are looking at what are existing certifications.

That is a way we are able to administer these types of programs.

So there's an LGBTQBE business certification that exists now.

We have incorporated that as a city.

Um our administration has awarded the first ever contracts to LGBTQ certified business owners.

Um so that's really exciting that we have taken that.

We, as you saw on the one example from um Brighton Heights, uh the prime on that is a um VOSB.

So we have incorporated VOSB into our work here, um, WBE for women and MBE um for minority um business uh entrepreneurs.

Those are the existing certifications that we can use to um measure our work.

Are you also tracking veterans you know the veteran contracts and someone absolutely, yes, all of that and that will be reviewed as part of the Pittsburgh Regional Disparity Study.

The difference is that um the Supreme Court governs race and gender conscious programs differently than they do veteran.

Um and so it's a different legal standard that applies.

So that is why you might hear us speak more about um the MBE or WBE components, but the VOSB is absolutely incorporated into the Pittsburgh Regional Disparity Study.

That I just to add to to what Deputy Chief Williams has shared, Councilwoman, I would say too, um, and she touched on it in the presentation.

You know, there is a survey out there now for businesses to complete as well.

So I think pushing that out to our respective networks so that we can hear from businesses that you know there are to the felicity's point a number of defined categories as it relates to legal precedent, et cetera.

But if there are other trends that businesses within our region are experiencing um, you know disparity, you know, in terms of oper access to opportunity, et cetera.

And that is something that once the study is done, ultimately um to the council president's question, council wants to evaluate what that could mean for Pittsburgh to lead the way.

I think about the protections that you know um this body has added to housing protection or other types of you know discrimination within um those sections of code.

Um I wish they think about geographical discrimination because I think that occurs a lot too.

Well, so councilwoman, I think that's what was exciting about what um Council President Lavelle mentioned related to the workforce uh that uh the workforce opportunities that I've done, it is geographic.

So we're ensuring that high and extreme needs neighborhoods that is race and gender neutral.

So we have your your character, your homewood are considered part of either high need or extreme needs neighborhoods that can be incorporated into job opportunities on city projects.

And so we are piloting that on the Robert E.

Williams um project right now, but we worked with the Biden Harris administration's Department of Labor, we've worked with Partner for Work, we've worked with partners for public good, uh Harvard Bloomberg on developing and leading this work, which is what I mentioned.

I'm happy to share the links with you all.

We have been featured nationally for uh leading in this work, and I'm actually gonna be on a national panel with um two other cities um tomorrow, talking about the work that we're doing here to be inclusive for job opportunities on contracts, not just business opportunities.

And you need to be a resident of the city of Pittsburgh.

So we're ensuring that residents are getting job opportunities on publicly funded city contracts.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for your work.

Thank you.

And those are the things that we want our public agencies to adopt as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any last remarks from members?

So move.

Second, second.

All favor say aye.

We are in recess.