Good morning and welcome to the standing committee's meeting for Wednesday, January 14th, 2026.

All council meetings will be live streamed on the city's website.

And for guest speakers joining us at the table, please do not turn off your microphones.

Our first order of business is roll call.

Will the clerk please take the roll?

Mr.

Charlotte.

Here.

Mr.

Coghill.

Miss Gross.

Mr.

Lavelle.

Here.

Mr.

Mosley.

Miss Salonetra.

Here.

Miss Warwick.

Mr.

Wilson.

Ms.

Strasberger Chair.

Here.

Five members present.

Thank you.

Our next order of business is public comment.

I would like to remind all speakers that the rules of council state that comments are limited to matters of concern, official action, or deliberation, which are or may be before city council, and profanity will not be permitted.

Please state your name and neighborhood for the record.

You will have three minutes to speak.

And the triplet Pittsburgh City Neighborhood Network, PCNN, USA Country Neighborhood Network, USA CNN, and World Neighborhood Network, WNN.

Facilitate Global Local Links for MHN.

PCAN, RLM Founder for Pittsburgh, and MHN Pittsburgh.

Josephine Baker was born there.

USA CNN and WNN, RLM Founder for Pittsburgh, MHN, the Hill Gaulten, Neighborhood in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Shao Tu, the Hill, Caduri neighborhood, Hong Kong, Jong Wall, Moro Hill, Dal Providencia, neighborhood, Rio de Janeiro, Argentina, Colis.

The concerns of council include local government and neighborhood uh business uplift, which I share in my initiatives.

Councilor Claymants, um, have you been lately to the fabulous Grandma B's?

Grandma B's uh is located at two five three seven Wylie in what is now called the Middle Hill neighborhood.

Middle Upper Lower Hills, Hill District, Lower Hill, now called Crawford Roberts.

Why?

Who decided?

Um, there's no evident referendum.

Autocratic fiat, in my view.

Uh Middle Hill neighborhood borders are Devil Years, Bedford, Heron, Center, Reed, Kirkpatrick, Rose.

Who determined this?

Um, each of uh of the hills should create a neighborhood council elected by residents of their neighborhood to take control of activities and especially of voting in elections, processing and storing the votes.

Um, so the neighborhooders can verify that their votes have not been misplaced or misapplied.

There's no legal objection or obstacle um for doing this.

Um's is generally highly regarded there in the Middle Hill, but what is not there is robotics.

Lawrenceville Central Neighborhood has onward robotics, Squirrel Hill North neighborhood has CMU Robotics Institute, but Middle Hill neighborhood has nothing.

What is that?

Because the people there have lacking information and intelligence capabilities.

We will move to those who are not registered to speak.

We'll take comments from those in the audience wishing to speak.

Are there any speakers wishing to come to the podium?

Good morning, my name is Yvonne S.

Brown.

I live at 715 Mercer Street up in the Hill District.

That's the high rise at the top of the hill where I told you there's 190 apartments in there.

And the management has made the decision to take away security.

We have no security.

And the crackheads are running through the building.

I stay in my apartment because I've been threatened.

Okay, but um just forget that for a minute.

I'll come back to that.

But I wanted to say to Mike to Mike Tomlin, Pittsburgh from Pittsburgh, we thank you.

193 wins.

I believe you hung with the best.

And now you can rest.

193 at the end.

Boy, oh boy, Mike, you can grin at that.

Okay, um, also.

I bring the signs.

Because in in my church, I was explaining to you about how the ministry had told the children to go and pick a man, and my grandbaby had picked Tim Stevens.

Now you know I have a problem with Tim, but I had never told her that.

But later on, I went to her and I said, Why did you pick that man?

And she said, I know him from City Council.

Because you remember I used to bring her, and all five of my granddaughters used to speak, especially her.

But when she was five, and Mr.

Burger said it was not the time or place for her to speak, I ran her out of here.

When I brought her back again, she's 11 now.

She wouldn't speak.

But even though she won't speak here, she is Donna Mike.

She had her art was over in the um over she had an art project, and the artist had picked her, she was like number three.

Then we went to, she's in the A step program that Mr.

Lavelle's children are in.

And we had went there and they were talking about uh Alexis being quiet, she's so quiet.

And me and her older sister was looking, not her, and it sure was.

And she what she had did is she wrote a poem for the children, a child in the um the hospital.

Cancer warrant, I believe.

But she had told him to dream and to um like she was it was a star or so on.

But uh no, um I I won't go into that because I want you to really understand when I talk about Tim Stevens.

I want you to understand is the thing where as you're giving him money to have the open hearings, but he makes the decision on what questions can be asked.

How can that be?

And I don't appreciate if you're giving money from my community and I can't ask the questions that I want to.

If if if it should be that I shouldn't, it should be the whole room to say it, not Tim.

Don't give him five or six hundred dollars just to stand in the room.

I know how you have these hearings.

You this is all your equipment.

All you do is stand in there, and he can say who can speak and what questions we can ask.

Come on now.

You just got to stop it.

Thank you very much.

Next speaker, please.

Good morning.

My name is Yumique Brown.

And uh I'm here to talk about Allegheny Lynx.

What I experienced with Allegheny Lynx did not feel accidental.

It felt deliberate.

The moment I said my name, they already knew my birthday.

I had to talk to the director's action line, and she said there's an app, so maybe they know, but no, she looked on the computer.

There's seven or more unique browns in the Pittsburgh area, so I don't know why when I called a 1-800 number, they knew who I was from when me not calling on from months ago.

She asked me, was my birthday what it was.

There's seven other ones.

Why did she ask the other birthday?

So, whatever Allegheny Links got going on, is not for domestic violence survivors.

The moment I said my name, they already knew what my birthday they knew my children's birthdays.

When they tried to act like they didn't even know I had children, after I said, y'all didn't ask me about my children.

So once I said their name, she said they said it's just her birthday.

I don't know what's going on here.

But and when I've been, when I began to advocate for my family's safety, that's when they start being rude, their tone changed, the help stopped sounding like help.

The attitude starts sounding like punishment.

They asked me where I wasn't safe.

I said home was in Wilkinsburg.

They called me back and said the only hotel they had was LaRoville.

When I called the director action line, they said I agreed to Arberley that only has Barosa Hotels.

Like I told them and any other shelter, I'm not just going to any family shelters.

I the deserve domestic violence help.

I was waiting to get, I was on list, waiting to get in line or wait, whatever.

They said they had to put me in the hotel, and I would have been fired if it was Robinson, if it was somewhere not 15 minutes, he can walk to the hotel from where he lives.

That was ridiculous.

How you how you how is that helping me?

So I don't understand how y'all just throw anybody where y'all want to throw.

Or when I called the director actual line, that's the people that supposed to intervene.

Like, who are they for?

Because Allegheny Lynx told them what they wasn't going to do.

And then when I told Alligating Lynx that Heather, the executive director said that I can get reassessed.

She said, No, I was already assessed when I was in a whole different situation.

When I was in a shelter.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

But I was once I got back to Pittsburgh, she said it don't matter.

I was already assessed December 3rd, so they're not going to do it again.

So I don't know who holds Alanny Lynx accountable, but somebody needs to look into them because there's a lot of other women that didn't make it up here.

There's mothers that's been up here talking about how their daughters is helped, and that's most likely the reason why.

The help that y'all supposed to give us gets pushed out.

We don't want to, nobody wants to come do this, but I am going to do that because y'all know who my mom is.

Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Brown.

Okay.

Next speaker, please.

Good morning, special agent sunshine.

Second Corinthians 1, 3, and 4 says, the God of all comfort comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others.

The wisdom for today comes from Proverbs 16 9.

It says, in their hearts, humans plan their course.

But the Lord establishes their steps.

Nobody else.

He does it.

How many of you can go without your phone for like a week, a month, a year?

Try it.

It's so liberating.

It will disconnect you from chaos.

And confusion in this world.

With no phone, I live so much more in peace.

I promise you, people call you with their stress, their trauma.

Let it go.

Please let it go.

Try it for an hour.

Try it.

First Peter, second and nine says, You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.

God's special possession.

Then you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

The darkness he called me out of was deception.

The deception of addiction.

Drug addiction.

I can stand here in my truth.

But that drug addiction was part of a setup for me to be homeless and be forced into prostitution from the things that I owned and possessed were taken from me.

It didn't work.

And to love myself above all others.

The thought for today says God's opinion of me is what matters the most.

Possessions will never identify who I am, my purpose, why I'm here.

To the Justice Department, who are confused about where my authority comes from.

God sent me here.

I didn't know nothing about the city council chambers.

But it's these members who are a big part of the injustice that was done to me.

My identity being stolen.

Insurance fraud.

Computer fraud.

I'm still being hacked with every device that I use.

So whoever's out there hacking me and trying to become part of me and swap destinies with me.

Lightning is real.

Thank you, Jesus, for using me as a vessel to do yours.

You will, not mine.

Thank you.

Next speaker, please.

There are any further speakers.

There being no further speakers, we will move on to our standing committee's agenda.

And our um one agenda item is P cards.

Motion to approve.

Second.

Discussion.

Seeing none, all those in favor of P cards, please indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

P cards are approved.

That exhaust our standing committee's agenda.

I'm sure we'll see you.

A much more robust agenda next week.

We will now move on to meeting announcements.

This afternoon with sessions at 1 p.m.

and 2 p.m.

Council will hold a briefing related to the NFL draft.

Monday, January 19th, City Council and City Clerk's offices will be closed in observance of Martin Luther King Jr.

Day.

Tuesday, January 2020 at 1 30 p.m.

Council will hold a cable cast public hearing on Bill 959 regarding the North Shore Entertainment District and regulations for neighborhood or district gateway signs.

Speaker registration will close at 11 30 a.m.

on the day of the hearing.

Next week, council will hold its regular meeting and standing committees meeting on both of them on Wednesday, January 21st at 10 a.m.

and 130 p.m.

respectively.

To register to speak at these meetings, please fill out the sign-up form on the council meeting webpage by the deadline.

And you may also claw call the clerk's office at 412-255-2138.

Is there anything from members?

Councilman Mosley.

Yeah, I just wanted to uh you know take a moment, you know, particularly, you know, in light of you mentioning um the briefing that we have this afternoon with the NFL draft to give a shout out to now former Coach Tomlin.

Uh and you know, congratulate him on you know, incredible nearly two decades of leadership for uh, you know, a team, you know, that really you know is uh you know emblematic, you know, of the spirit of Western Pennsylvania.

You know, there's few teams in any sport um that that really you know rallies or a reason together, you know.

I've had the opportunity to work in a lot of cities, you know, throughout my career, and you know, there's really nothing like Steeler Nation.

And you know, I know that um, you know, over the past you know, several seasons, you know, we haven't you know reached that pinnacle like you know, we've uh you know, have come used to.

I think you know, we're spoiled a little bit, you know, over the last 40 years with how well uh that the team has done, but even looking at you know the national response to uh Mike Tomlin, you know, stepping down shows the tentacles that Steeler Nation and the impact that Steeler Nation has is you know one of the true iconic teams in all of sports, you know, maybe the New York Yankees and the and the Los Angeles Dodgers and teams like that, you know, are the only you know, peers that the Pittsburgh, you know, Steelers have.

So, you know, as we uh embark on on a journey to find the next coach, it was just some very big shoes to feel to follow Chuck Noel, Bill Cower, you know, and Mike Tallman.

I think we're probably the only team that had three different coaches win championships under under the team's uh banner.

So um I think it would be you know, it would be interesting if Kurt Senegi comes home after winning the championship for Indiana uh next Monday.

You know, I'm speaking into existence, but I just want to just given just the response.

I know Mayor O'Connor put out a statement.

I know former Mayor Ganey put out a statement, and many elected officials have put out statements um uh about it, just showing you know how much the team you know means to this region, and as we all get ready uh to welcome the world to Pittsburgh, you know, in April.

It's a very you know exciting time, but I just want to wish uh Coach Tomlin the best on the next uh chapter of his journey and Godspeed.

Thank you very much.

Any other comments from members?

Seeing none, I'll take a motion to excuse the absent members, approve the minutes and adjourn the meeting.

So moved.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Meeting is adjourned.