Good afternoon, and welcome to Pittsburgh City Council's Cable Cast Post agenda relative to flash crowd disturbances.

I want to thank the invited panelists, members of the public who are here in person as well as tuning in from home.

We are here today to discuss a critical issue that has been at the front of mind for many of our fellow residents across the city.

I call for this post-agenda meeting today because our cities and cities around the country are wrestling with the urgent, complex and escalating challenge.

The recent rise in flash crowd disturbances involving adolescents and young adults.

When large spontaneous groups block the flow of traffic, or pedestrians disrupt local commerce or create environments where altercations of property damage occur, it does strike at the core of our city's well-being, including for those involved in the incidents.

However, my background in community organizing and urban public policy and my experience serving at youth as a mentor and as a coach has shown me that draconian approaches will not provide the long-term solutions we yearn for.

Simply put, we cannot merely arrest our way out of a complex social dynamic.

We must never lose sight that these young people involved in these incidents are our young people.

They are Pittsburgh's children.

When our children mobilize in these disruptive ways, it is often the system of a larger disconnect and a loud cry for help.

Well, undoubtedly, we need to apply effective accountability measures.

We also must balance that with meaningful opportunities for redemption.

If we want a permanent solution, we must look at the root causes and ask ourselves some hard questions today.

What are the ingredients of an engaging safe haven?

Where do they currently exist?

How do we create more?

How do we ensure our youth have accessible, engaging, and supervise their spaces to gather outside of school and home in every corner of our city?

How are we tracking digital trends?

Social media is the primary primary tool behind these spontaneous events, and how can we better anticipate these digital flashpoints before they manifest physically on our streets?

And what is our community-led response?

How are we deploying social services, street outreach workers, violence interrupters, educators, youth advocates, and other stakeholders alongside our traditional law enforcement?

Our goal for this post-agenda is to find solutions, driving fact-finding, dialogue, and ultimately collaboration.

We are here to forge a comprehensive and equitable path forward.

So today we aim to listen to thought leaders and experts to understand the complex dynamics and root causes that have contributed to this immense challenge we collectively face to engage community allies to gain insight for those to work working directly with our youth regarding intervention strategies and the urgent need for more funding for youth programming and hear from public safety experts to understand logistical challenges, current protocols, and how do we best collaborate with law enforcement as community partners.

We must balance the absolute necessity of public safety, community health, and general wellness with the deep obligation we have to guide, protect, and invest in our youth.

I'm looking forward to a highly constructive dialogue today, one that will form smart, effective solutions to keep Pittsburgh safe, vibrant, and a place our young people can thrive and feel a sense of belonging.

I also want to know that we're being joined by my Steam Council colleagues, Councilwoman Barbara Warwick, and our council president Dan LaVelle.

And to begin, we are going to uh I'm going to yield the fit, I'm going to yield the floor to our first speaker, Dr.

Paul Levinson, professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University, who analyzes flash cloud crowd disturbances as a natural progression of technology enabled communication.

He emphasizes that the internet and social media act as rapid catalysts, allowing crowds to assemble spontaneously for both positive organizing and disruptive behaviors.

Thank you for joining us, Dr.

Levinson.

Well, thank you for inviting me.

I'm very honored to have been invited and to be attending this important meeting.

I think this is a very important subject, but I think I might have a slightly different focus than some of or many of you may have, and I say this, having read the provisional law that you passed a little while ago, which as far as I can tell limits on certain days, people 17 and under being able to gather in a crowd or even by themselves, if they're 17 or under, unless there's someone who is also 21 and older.

And you know, I'll be I'll be happy uh to tell you why.

The First Amendment, as I'm sure you all know, among the several important things that it guarantees anyone here in the United States, among those very important crucial rights is the right to peaceably assemble?

I'm sure you all know that.

But possibly what you might not be totally in tune with is that there's nothing in that First Amendment that says this right can only be exercised by people 21 years of age or older, and as a matter of fact, back in the 1960s, there was a very crucial Supreme Court decision known as the Tinker Decision, T I N K E R, which held that a student's First Amendment rights don't end when they walk into a classroom.

And in fact, they don't end anywhere.

Those rights pertain to all human beings.

Now, obviously, if we're talking about a three-year-old toddler or maybe even a seven-year-old kid, obviously there have to be some restrictions on what they can do.

But to say a 17-year-old or even a 16-year-old can't gather in a group.

Again, as long as they're not doing anything criminal, obviously, if anyone does anything criminal, the police have an obligation to stop that.

I thoroughly support that.

But to say without any further details that just the mere gather, if you're 17 years old or younger, cannot take place unless there's someone who's 21 years or older there, I think is a blatant violation of the First Amendment, and I also think it's a very bad idea.

Now, one of the things that Congress member Mosley mentioned, and you know, this is an important thing to keep in mind.

What's the backdrop of this?

Obviously, it's social media.

Kids spend an enormous amount of time on social media, they make friends on social media.

One of the benefits of social media, in fact, is that you can get to meet people online and later meet them in person.

So I think it's important to keep what I'm going to now tell you in mind when you get so concerned about this impact of social media that you pass an ordinance, again, which in my view is frankly blatantly at odds with the First Amendment.

So many years ago I was at an auction, and uh a box of, I don't even know what was in the box went up for sale, and the auctioneer said, well, who'll give me a dollar for this?

So cheapskate that I am, that appealed to me.

So I raised my hand, and I got this box for a dollar.

And basically there were a bunch of you know pretty much worthless things in this box, but at the very bottom of the box, there was a copy of Good Housekeeping.

I'm sure you've all heard of that magazine.

But this copy of Good Housekeeping was dated 1910.

Okay, so over 100 years ago.

116 years ago, being said.

And so I leafed through this magazine.

I'm not particularly interested in good housekeeping and its articles, but I found a very, very fascinating and significant article.

It was an article by someone by the name of William McKeever.

He was a professor in a school of agriculture someplace in the Midwest, and the title of that article in 1910, was Motion Pictures Colonel, a school for Criminals.

Actually, I left out a word.

Motion pictures colon, a primary school for criminals.

And I read through the article and I had to laugh because here was this article published in 1910, and it was saying we have to do something about this new mode of communication.

It's ruining our children.

They spend their afternoons in dark, danky theaters.

Who knows what kind of ill effect it's going to have on them?

So nowadays we could laugh at something like that.

But this worry that we adults have about new media and what impact they're having on our kids, that has continued throughout the past hundred and sixteen years.

By the time we got to the 1950s, most people were okay with motion pictures for kids, but they were concerned about comic books.

By the 1970s, comic books were let off the hook, as had been motion pictures.

But now a lot of experts were concerned about something that we're all aware of: television.

And each new media system, in turn, took its place as an object of concern, and a you and cry and laws have to be made about this.

After about 20 years, video games replace television as the medium that we have to make sure our kids don't get too involved in and ruined by.

She has talked about making criminal charges available for any parent that allows their kids to get together in these so-called team takeovers.

And that concerns me because there again resides the route to fascism, telling people what they can do and what they can't do when they're not committing a crime.

So I'm not saying people can do whatever they want.

But what I am saying is it's a very, very dangerous thing to outlaw kids' meeting.

And I know the main purpose of this meeting is to come up with alternatives.

Absolutely, I think that's a great idea.

You know, here in uh New York City.

One of the great things that has been going on for decades are summer concerts.

Everyone likes that.

They're free of charge.

Another way of engaging young people is you open up pools, you open up places which are cooler in the uh in the summertime.

You connect with motion picture theaters.

Some of them still exist to have special events, special movies that might be specially appealing to kids of this age.

But once again, we need to be very careful not to in the name of correcting a problem, which maybe isn't even that much of a problem.

Trample the First Amendment right that every person in this country above the age of I don't know, five, six, seven, eight, nine, but certainly seventeen, sixteen, and fifteen, that every human being has the prized of what the First Amendment says.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dr.

Levinson.

Looking forward to the QA session that's gonna follow the presentations from our distinguished panel, uh, our next panelists uh fluent from Philadelphia, and that's from Rutgers University, is Dr.

Valerie Adams Bass from Rutgers University, a highly regarded developmental psychologist and assistant professor who is nationally recognized for the expertise and positive youth development, adolescents, social adolescent social dynamics, and how media stereotypes and technology shape youth behavior.

Thank you for joining us, Dr.

Adams Bass.

Thank you for having me.

Can everyone hear me?

Okay, cool.

I'm gonna uh share my screen.

There's probably a little bit of uh educator in me.

Um, trying to have her sit down, but um, so it seems like many of us here are are here to really address come up with creative solutions for how to work with young people.

The first few slides are really baseline information you may or may not know, and then I'll get to like the meat of what I think the possibilities are.

Um, so really thinking about out of school time, so out-of-school time extends to weekends and evenings, is not just just out of school, right?

You see, we used to say after school programming, but I want to say out of school time really extends to the weekends into the evenings for young people up until the age of 18, which includes adolescents and teens.

So I want to sort of start there with that basic definition.

Um, because what we do know, um, those of us who've done positive youth development work, um, I certainly have been an extension agent here for Penn State University, working with young people.

Um, I've done some work here with the Cardinal Mellon Libraries here, teen reading lounge, which happens in your libraries, which is a great public space.

So, really thinking about there's a precipitous drop-off in programming for teens.

Whether you're in the middle of the city or you are out in the suburbs, there's a precipitous drop off, even those programs that have been around historically serving young people.

It's something about getting to the teen that we we probably as a society, and they don't need assistance or support, but here we are talking about that, right?

So you can look, you can do a good quick Google, you'll find all kinds of programs for K through six, um, maybe middle school, but once you get to the high school age, there are not very many out of school extended time programs for young people.

So we probably should put that on the table.

We should put that on table, right?

So that's a larger systemic issue.

We just have not done a good job nationally as well as in the state of Pennsylvania thinking about their teens, but they still need some place to go, they need some assistance, and they need to have a voice, right?

So that's hands down for years that has been the case, and we still haven't figured out what to do about it.

I'm not sure why we haven't, but I want to I want to put that on the table as well.

So, really thinking about um when we're thinking about young people, we tend to move into the academic support.

We think about um, you know, K through three, we want to make sure they're reading on schedule, so we're gonna have all kinds of reading programs, uh middle school, we we know that the transition from middle school to high school is very difficult, so we want to make sure they're ready to stay in high school and that they we don't have that attrition, but once they get to high school, again, we haven't really thought about what it is we need to do.

So I want to lean into sort of this holistic approach of social emotional learning.

I am a developmental psychologist, so I must be honest about that, as well as that educational component.

So really thinking about how we serve young people holistically and not just leaning into the academics or just leaving them to figure out what they need to do on their own.

And what we know again is that our school time programs really are thinking about um academics, right?

And really looking at the college track, but we also know that you know that the, you know, what has been said is you know, media is also a place, and we know, unfortunately, um, I'm gonna say unfortunately, um, I'm gonna go on record in saying that that right now, if you ask a young person what it is that they want to do when they become an adult, does anyone know what career they're gonna say they want to have?

Anyone?

Right, they want to be an influencer, they don't want to be a doctor, they don't want to be a basketball player, they don't want to be a lawyer, they don't want to be an astronaut, they want to be an influencer.

So they're going to be figuring out how to influence, and that may include public gatherings, but we'll get to that later.

That's what they want to do, that's what they want to be.

So we've got to figure out how to bring these things together, and we don't think about that because we're still on that they want to be a doctor, lawyer.

We have to tell the urban children that you know you might not make it to the NBA or the NFL, but they want to be influencers, right?

And many of us don't even know how to use the technology that they're using to become influencers.

So let's keep that in mind as well.

And the other thing that I would say is when we're serving young people, particularly young people of color, there's a deficit-based approach, right?

There's a punitive-based approach, which we just heard this idea of taking away autonomy, taking away the build, the ability to gather, taking away the free movement and free speech from them.

And that tends to be our approach to working with youth in urban environments or youth who are unlike us versus thinking of them first as humans.

So, what do we need to do to be culturally culturally attuned to the young people we're serving and make sure that you know we're aware of what might be specific to them and how we embed that and how we integrate that into what we do to serve them and how we figure out how to serve them, right?

That asset-based approach.

Um, there was a time when I was a practitioner, not just an academic, I don't think of myself as just an academic, but serving in a mentoring program, high-income mentors working with urban young people, and several of the mentors would say, you know, these young people are teaching me more than I'm teaching them.

Yes, I do have access.

Yes, I do have the social capital.

Yes, I can share with them what it took to get the career have.

But I'm learning so much from them about resilience and about flexibility and about the reality of life.

So really thinking about asset-based approach.

Young people, no matter how fantastic or not so fantastic they are, they come to us with assets, and that's something where we haven't figured out how to tap into.

So hopefully those of us here at the table can really begin to think about how do we tap into the assets of young people, particularly young people who may not look like us or they may look like us, but they have a different life experience.

Their family, their family context is different, the schools they attend are different, and certainly the time of life that they're experiencing, this growth period during where we are globally and nationally, is very distinct and different, even if they're similar to what any of us have had to grow through.

Thinking about social justice.

Many young people can look as their prefrontal cortex is still growing.

You've probably heard that at noise, but it's true, really.

Until 25, this area where we make sense and rationale is still growing for young people.

So for them, where we may have a gray area, not to not to confuse that with the gray matter in our head, but um in our brains, they can see things in black and white.

It's not right or is right.

They're not gonna say, Well, maybe let's think about why she's done this or why he's done that, which is a little bit of what we're doing here.

Like, why are they gathering?

What is it they're missing?

A young person's gonna say, that is not right.

They're gonna say, that's great.

Let's do something, let's do something about it.

Now, what they choose to do may not be what we want them to do, quite honestly, or it may not be what's safest for them or safest for the community where they live or where they're spending most of their time.

But they rarely see things gray area, like, well, maybe they had to do that because this was needed, or maybe she wanted to do that because she desired this.

They're generally going to see things in the black and white.

It's either good or it's bad, is right or it's wrong.

That's just where they are, right?

And so we can forget about that because we can look at them physically and say, but they're tall enough, they're big enough, they do this, they can get to school by themselves, they can do these things, they should know better, but they're still developing.

And I think we often forget that about adolescents.

They're not quite adults, although we like to adultify them, particularly if they are uh if they are children of color, right?

If their voice is deep, if they've grown here on their face, if their physique is different, we see that before we see them as young people.

And that might have to do with my comment about us not having programming for them.

We should we should know better by now, I would say, and not just Pittsburgh, I would say that nationally on the record.

Um, so a couple things, positive character development.

This comes out of, it's been around for a while, bubbling, but really Richard Lerner, Dr.

Richard Lerner, sort of was able to kind of put this together, this these seas of positive youth development, so this idea of character building, competence, confidence, connection, caring, and contribution.

I won't bore you with that, but those are really the C's of any good program that's trying to serve young people.

If you're trying to serve young people, you want to make sure that you have all these C's there.

I mean, oftentimes we do forget about the caring and the connection, right?

Because we want them to be safe, we want the adults to feel safe where the young people are gathering or not, and we forget about the caring and the connection.

Both are vital for meaningful relationships and for retention.

Because if you look at the programs that serve young people, including a program like 4-H, as I mentioned, I work for, including a program like Big Big Brothers or Big Sisters, both of them are national programs, they look a little different, state to state, but they also have attrition at the high school level because you cannot treat an adolescent the same way you treat a seventh grader, eighth grader, and definitely not a kindergartner.

They're gonna leave your program.

They're not staying.

When you're talking, sit down, stay in that chair, don't go anywhere, do your homework first in a particular way.

That is not how you're gonna engage and keep and sustain a program or keep those young people coming into your door.

So we really have to think about how we connect, and in this space of digital media being their primary source of connection, we might need to lean into that a little bit more and caring, really trying to establish a relationship with those young people.

And that might mean in establishing that relationship with those young people that we have to take one on the chin, we have to take one on the chest a few times before they realize that you're there for them and you're not walking out the door, right?

You're not walking out the door, you're not just checking a box.

So I want to lean into that.

Um standard best practices are here, but the ones that I want to talk about a little bit more are the culturally responsive practices because as we build programs, particularly for young people of color, um, we want to think about these practices, embedding these practices in, right, so that everyone benefits.

When you have best practices like this included or on top of the standard best practices, you're likely to have attrition, you're likely to attract people, and you're likely to get young people to be the champions for your programming, right?

So that trust, as I said, empowering youth agencies, we're gonna get to that, really thinking about clear expectations and allowing those young people to help you create those expectations.

Young people, they have a double standard as we do, right?

We're saying these young people may or may not be able to do the things they want to do, but they also have a double standard for us, right?

You're an adult, you get to do this or not.

You're a young person, you get to do this or not, but you don't get to do the same thing, right?

And so they too have a double standard, and we have to think about that when we're young when we're working with young people.

You as an adult, you definitely should know better, right?

Me as a young person, maybe not so much.

I can take a few risks, and you should be okay with me taking those risks because I'm not quite an adult yet.

But we rarely think of that.

We just see the action, we see the behavior, it makes us uncomfortable, or it makes the people around us uncomfortable, and so we immediately put up the the, we put up the walls instead of establishing that relationship, that level of communication to figure out what's going on here, or even to help them to point out that you, sir, or you young lady, you too have a double standard.

What are we going to do about this double standard?

How can we come together, meet somewhere in the middle, right?

And that takes a bit of negotiation, and that takes a bit more of that cultural competency and understanding how they're moving, how they're speaking, what their language is, what is the priority in their community at this moment.

Nurturing productive challenges.

That is where, you know, what is the, you can ask the young person, what is the problem, and how are you going to address it?

Now, sometimes they dream big.

As a practitioner, having worked with young people, at one point, you know, the young, we're gonna, you know, one, they said to me, you know, teen pregnancy is a problem.

You can just ask them the question what's the problem, what's the issue, what's the what how can we solve it, right?

Because we are all adults, unless there's a Benjamin buttons at this table.

Uh, we're all adults at this table.

Where's the young person helping us to figure this out, right?

Where's the young people?

You usually need two in a crowd like this so they feel comfortable enough to speak up, right?

That's just what the research shows.

Um, where's that young person here helping us and listening and saying she has no clue what she's talking about?

Yeah, that's right, that's right.

So we need that young person to be a part of addressing and resolving the issues, right?

But also, that young person is also going to be able to say, as I started to say, they wanted to eradicate all team pregnancy.

When we talked about teen pregnancy, this group I was working with with young teenagers, we want to eradicate all teen pregnancy.

One of the young women happen to be pregnant at the same time.

Okay, how we're gonna do that.

They had the grandest plans, right?

Of how I said, you know, you're saying all over the globe or right here in the city in this community in this environment.

So, really, that's where the adult is coming in.

One, the young people can sometimes, as I said, they're gonna say what the issue is.

We're gonna go downtown or we're gonna go to the mall, and people are gonna be uncomfortable, but we want to go there because there's no place to stay.

Okay, what else should we do then?

Right?

And they're most in most cases, they're gonna have a brilliant idea.

And adults who are around there developing that caring relationship and having those cultural competences can coach them through.

Is it probable that we're gonna eradicate all team pregnancy?

Is it probable that we're gonna prevent all young people from having these flash meetings?

What else might we do, right?

So that's where that relationship with adults comes in, having the young people at the table to say, well, that might not be probable, but this is, or if we have this alternative here, then maybe this wouldn't be the challenge that we're all facing, us as young people feeling like it's us against you as adults.

So those are some things to think about, right?

And those culturally based activities, like how do young people express themselves, right?

So there's a youth culture for sure that we need to understand and be aware of.

And sometimes we have to interlope in their spaces.

I say that all the time, all the time.

Um we have to, I'm not really one for Roblox.

I have a young person in my house, I have a child, but she's on Roblox all the time.

So I'm interloping in Roblox.

I don't want to play Roblox, but I'm in there because I want to know what she's playing.

I want to know what the popular games are, I want to know when they change, I want to know how the young people are speaking to each other, because that also influences how they move outside of the digital spaces.

We are in a space where how they move in a digital spaces tends to influence how they move outside of the digital spaces.

Whereas there was a time where you would say what people do here and in um real life influences the virtual spaces.

We're right now in a space where it's more about what's going on virtually is influencing what's going on in actuality.

So we have to be aware of what the culture is of young people, and then if there's specific cultures that we need to be aware of, we need to do that too.

So we need to have some eyes and ears and give ourselves some space to learn about those young people.

This, having had all that in the background, this is like my favorite, my favorite graphic, my favorite theory for working with young people.

You can do this with kindergartners, but for sure you want to do this with adolescents.

And this is Roger Hart's ladder participation.

This was actually developed for humanities, humanitarian-based programs in countries that have had seen war or famine, where young people's lives have been in shambles, but it works right here in the United States, and we don't do it often enough.

Oftentimes we're all the way down the bottom where we're saying that we just want the young people to show up and smile for the camera.

We've got some t-shirts for you, or we've got some pizza movie tickets.

When you're working with adolescents, knowing that they're developing, they're headed to adulthood.

They still are not fully developed.

They want those challenging opportunities.

We need to work in tandem with them.

As I said, we're the young people at the table, maybe they're Bahami in the audience.

So we want to move from manipulating young people, using them as a token or decoration, to really collaborating with them.

It's hard to get to rung eight if we've consistently work with younger children, K through eight, or if we just haven't had adolescents in our lives anytime recently, other than to see them in public spaces at the mall passing.

So we really want to move to a place.

I would say if if you find, you don't have to raise your hand, you don't have to smile.

If you're at rung one, two, or three, then at least I want to stretch you to get to rung six.

Ideally, you're at rung eight, where the young people right here helping to make decisions, pushing back, pulling in.

But if you're at one, two or three, and we're all busy, we're all trying to do things, and in the case of our council members here, our esteemed council members, you're trying to make the city make sure the city's okay and it's healthy.

But we really do have to make space for young people because they it, you know, they are the future.

They indeed are the future.

We've got to make space.

Um, if you think about, you know, if you say, go ahead and drive the car and they've never driven before, how would they know to drive the car if we've never given them the opportunity?

Right?

So you've got to make space for them.

And sometimes it's just small conversations and moving into a larger place.

So I want to say you want to make space for those young people to be at the table, even if it's figuring out the out of school time programs at work that already exist, how they need to be modified, or if they're new models that need to come onto the table.

And they need to be part of building it.

And if if they're not part of building it, let's say you have an idea now.

Before you launch the idea, I want to encourage you to have young people come.

And that's where you get to that rung five, six, seven, or eight, where young people, one, they're gonna buy in because their voice has been a part of it, two, they're gonna tell you whether it does or doesn't work.

Right?

We might have the brilliantest ideas, but it's been a while since I was a teenager.

And I think the rest of us here at the table as well.

So I want to encourage you to look at the Roger's Heart ladder, and it's kind of a little bit easier on your eyes if if you have aging eyes like I do, but really thinking about getting to the place where, even if it's adult led, the youth are consulting, they're giving you feedback.

That's not gonna work, it's gonna work, try this, try this person, try that.

I want to meet this person, we want to do this this way.

Really thinking about that is super important.

Getting to the place where the young people are consistently a part of that conversation is gonna make it a little bit easier, and they're gonna have you're gonna have more buy-in, right?

But it's it's when you're partnering with them.

So I want to lean into really moving into having young people be at the table consistently, and you need to have at least two.

So they're feeling comfortable and confident enough to speak in front of a room full of adults with lots of titles and lots of degrees and lots of responsibilities, and they may just be in high school, right?

If they're if if they're in high school.

So we really want to think about empowering them in that important way.

Couple examples.

Um, I know you did have a freedom school.

Um, as I said, I've done some work here.

Um, you do have a team reading lounge.

I I consistently work with libraries.

I was mentioning to Councilman Mosley, I've worked with the Carnegie Melling Libraries here in person, and then I've been working with the libraries virtually post-COVID, really thinking about how do we help our teen librarians get used to working with teens, right?

Because they may know the Dewey Dessel system, they may know where to tell you how to find the books, but there's some librarians who've not had youth development or adolescent theory at all, if ever.

And so giving that professional development so that young people who work with young people have never had young people in their life, or it's been a while, or haven't worked with a group of young people, helping them understand how to make those connections, how to do things meaningfully.

Um, and I will say this has been one of our sites where it's been pretty comfortable and pretty well received.

I'm making space, you know.

You know, when I met with the librarians and I say, when I say adolescents or teens, what's the first thing you say?

Everybody's face turns into an emoji, right?

Everyone's face is screwed up and turned up, and I said, okay, now think about that.

You're working with these young people and look at your face, right?

So, how does that how does that translate when you're working with them?

If the minute I say, What do you think of when you work with teens, you turn into an upside down smile emoji?

What does that transfer?

How does that energy work?

So really helping sometimes us as adults step back to say, okay, what do I have to do differently?

What do I need to learn about teens?

And I will say we have our work cut out for us because the virtual space is an extended world.

Um our net has done, I think this paper was maybe out in 2006, if not 2002.

He wrote a paper about media as a super peer.

And it really has become the super peer.

I think that's his only paper in Super Peer where he said, you know, that is where young people are learning to be, right?

And that was years ago, well before, you know, maybe my space was out at that time, but now we do know, and there's evidence and documentation that media is a super peer, which is why I said right now, a lot of the norms for young people are happening in the virtual space.

So not only do we have to make these connections and figure out how to integrate them into direct programming, but we also have to figure out what is swirling in these virtual spaces for young people, and how can we capitalize on that?

How can we help them also to think through the decision making that they are involved in and that their peers are involved in in a meaningful way?

And making physical space, right?

Oftentimes central business districts don't have space for young people, surely often not the people who live in the city, but the people who work in the city.

So, where are those spaces?

Maybe they're private spaces, certainly public space, that we can make space for teens.

Again, I want to lean into the teen lounge where there are some libraries, right?

Where, including here in Pittsburgh, where they have made space that's this is the teen space.

So when you go to the library, this is where the teens go and hang out.

It was not necessarily so hats off to your library system.

Easy because there are patrons who would come in and say, What are they doing in here?

It's after school.

Why are they here?

But we also know that between 3 30 and 6 30, this has not changed and too long that that is the highest rate of what?

What is that?

3 30 to 6 30.

What is this the highest rate of?

Delinquency, right?

That's the highest rate of delinquency, whether shoplifting, whether swirling, because those teenagers are either latchkey kids or their parents feel like they're mature enough and they are busy.

And so that remains the highest time because we don't have enough programming or we don't have the kind of programming that's attractive to young people.

So we have to keep that in mind as well, right?

So again, just thinking about these as takeaways, really thinking about the programs that exist that do well to attract young people, what other programs can we add to that list of programming, and can we think about integrating young people?

So, going back to heart's ladder to really think about, you know, what does it look like when young people are at the table?

And can we allow ourselves to have patience?

Finally, it's saying it seems like you've done this already.

Um local business partnerships, they usually take a little bit more massaging, to be honest.

Local business tend to take a lot more massaging to get them on board, and they more than librarians have not worked with young people other than a cash transaction.

You come to buy something and you leave my store.

That's it.

They've not done much more, so but they are key because we're thinking about adolescents, they need to learn some skills.

Not, you know, they need to learn skills, those social skills, particularly this group who have been in this virtual space, extended virtual space because of COVID 19.

So thinking about how do you one select those businesses and what kind of trainings and opportunities and partnerships will you offer those young those businesses so that they have a more higher comfort level of working with young people.

School community collaboration, schools tend to want collaborators that are gonna come in and do academics.

I can tell you as a professor, I have gotten to a place where I don't answer my email on the weekend.

If you can't figure out how to do your homework, I'll see you on Monday.

I'm tired.

So I'm sure that the students are tired too.

If they've been in school 8 to 3 30, then some of them may be in another program.

So thinking about other opportunities for life skills, maybe it's learning how to run a business, maybe it's financing, maybe it's gardening.

I don't know what it would be for this group, and that's where the young people can say this is what we would do and come to, but really thinking about school community, school community partnerships that are not just academic, not traditionally academically focused.

There are ways to integrate academics if we can just trust the process that doesn't require the standard routine, rudimentary way of approaching academics.

And lastly, as I said, you civic engagement and you voice young people really do want to do something.

There are models all over the globe of young people who want to do something, models here in this in the state of Pennsylvania as well as in the city of Pittsburgh, where young people want to do something, let them do it.

Figure out how to let them do it.

You know, and that means conversations, and that might mean that some of your meetings don't take place at one, but they take place at 3 30 because the kids are out of school, right?

Some practical things like that.

That might mean that at a school, instead of, you know, parent-teacher partnerships happening at a time where most of your parents have to work and they work great salaries.

They don't work, um, they don't have salary positions.

That might mean moving your um your parent-teacher time.

It might not mean all the time, but it might mean alternating.

So some of it is practical low-hung and fruit where you say we need to move our meetings every other month or every quarter so that these parents or these kids who can't come at this time can come.

So some of those ways of demonstrating that you care, you value what people are experiencing, is another way to develop that relationship and that trust.

Super important youth advisory councils that have an adult or two who's there, but it's primarily young people who are maybe meeting parallel to you, and then they can come and sit with their two representatives and say, here's what we've been talking about.

What have you been talking about at your council meetings?

Here's what we're seeing.

Here's what we need.

What do you need?

Maybe there's some partnerships there.

So really thinking about um youth as also being responsible, committed to um the city of Pittsburgh just as much as the adults around this table are um third spaces.

Um councilman Mosley has talked about that.

There are virtual third spaces as well as in person, as I said, where are those spaces that are not being occupied?

How can you massage that relationship so that even if those young people are hanging around in town?

Are there third spaces where they can go and just be teens without being ostracized for being teens?

Of course, there's gonna be a need for adult supervision, but are there spaces that exist that are not being used?

Right?

Are there spaces that exist that are not being used and how can we collaborate and make those partnerships meaningful?

Um super important, those digital spaces, hard to crack when young people get into them.

We do have to eavesdrop, as I said, but once adults get into it, they're on to the next.

And by the time we figure out what their next digital space is, we're too late, really, quite honestly, which is why I say you want to interlope in those spaces as you can, but let them have that space with our interloping, but find where those other spaces that you can collaborate and connect, where you can have they can game and do things and they can interlope and you can hear what they're talking about, and you can establish that open communication to figure out where you can interject and intercede before young people are swirling on the streets and it's creating anxiety, or perhaps potentially leading to um you know uh the kinds of things that we don't want to see young people experience or the city.

So I want to thank you for listening to me.

Um I'm happy to engage in additional conversation and other notes that I took um as I was here.

Thank you.

Appreciate you.

Thank you, Dr.

Bass.

I do just want to note that um uh we're also joined by uh Councilwoman Gross in Strasburg Online, but we are joined in person by Council President Lavelle, Councilman Wilson, Councilman Charlotte and Councilwoman Warwick.

And and I do I do, you know, really appreciate your your presentation, Dr.

Bass.

And I really look at this, you know, conversations and impetus to work with the stakeholders at the table as well as the many stakeholders in council chambers and the gallery to in the very immediate future begin some regular dialogues with those young people, you know, create that space.

So I kind of see this as that launching point to really, you know, get our minds thinking about how how important that is.

I've had the opportunity over the past week to be in a couple spaces here directly from young people, and I would, you know, really love it.

Some point in the near future, particularly around the issue of third spaces at a time later than 1 30 on a weekday, or it could be one third of a weekday if it's you know about a month from now when school ends, and and and have and have young folks, you know, at the table.

So that's definitely something that we're gonna do.

I do want to just know for the record that uh, you know, we are going to, as we continue this work, is going to be engaging with our young people, you know, in a really intentional and meaningful way.

Um so we're gonna start with our local experts um who you know have been ten toes down in the community have a lot of unique perspectives uh from from violence interrupting to youth mentoring to to law enforcement, and we'll just start uh until my left of Mr.

Rivers.

If you could uh introduce yourself, your organization, and your title.

Thank you, uh, councilman for having me.

Number one, uh, good afternoon, everybody.

My name is Jason Rivers, uh, and I wear multiple hats.

Um I'm an educator with Pittsburgh Public Schools for um 24 years now.

I've worked on the middle school, high school level as well as central administration uh currently overseeing the work that we do around violence prevention and intervention in the district uh and managing our partnerships that we have with the city of Pittsburgh as well as uh many community organizations, um, and we have uh something called the PPS Safety Collaborative, where we convene Monday morning um to talk about any threats to safety within community and school and um how we can work collaboratively to share critical information around that.

Um in addition to the work uh that has me you know collaborate with many internal external partners um you know um inside of the district.

Um there's an initiative that I'm a senior leader with called AIM, uh downtown Pittsburgh, and and AIM uh is an acronym that stands for uh uh um excuse me uh achieving goals, inspiring change and motivating students.

And uh we've been operating downtown um for the last three years, um, and it's at advocacy work as well as uh character coaching work.

Um that is a mixed uh methodology between uh social work as well as um um intervention prevention specialist work.

Um so you know, our goal and strategy within that uh our work came about, you know, post-pandemic um in the city of Pittsburgh and um this narrative you know the solving the so-called youth problem, uh, especially downtown Pittsburgh, and so uh we operate weekends and after school and help the um create safe passage for youth in our downtown corridors, uh building relationships as you know, I think it was really powerful that uh Dr.

Adams Bass shared around um how important it is to be a collaborator with youth, whether it be in the district or within community.

For me, this conversation is a both end.

Uh it's about high expectation for young people and genuine care, and not just the type of care that um is related to my interest and my needs, uh, but what is it centering the needs of young people?

Um I think history has told us, you know, I think uh the conversation related to downtown specifically, uh, we would hear conversation around um those organizers or or community leaders, uh city leaders, city officials, business leaders around, excuse me, the the uh unsupervised youth activity.

And one thing that I would always push in space and still continue to do is um who has a promise of place in space and who doesn't.

Uh and because I think one thing that we have failed our youth in is the ability to provide uh a promise of space and place that um that is equivalent to the beauty of we've seen in like the likes of a market square or many other spaces downtown that are phenomenal spaces.

Um history has shown us uh whether we're talking about East Liberty or downtown, you know, we are talking about young people uh and families that have dealt with displacement.

Uh and so we see the change of East Liberty in time uh where you know I'm a resident of the East End of East Liberty, and you know, East Liberty looks a lot different today than it did when I was growing up there.

And so where do you find a place that belongs to you when that place now has different meaning?

And you know, certain cultural norms that were okay and acceptable now become a clash and are no longer acceptable or desirable.

And so we do a lot of work around uh social decor with young people, uh, especially downtown, because uh we do see you know that there are times where youth gatherings and certain behavior choices can be um deviant and desired to to uh produce violence, and that's problematic to me.

It's unacceptable, and that's the work that we do with young people.

But the majority of young people that come in space are looking for a space to have fun, a space to enjoy the beauty, the safety of space, and in many of their communities, unfortunately, uh there just aren't as many as open safe spaces that once were.

And then the other thing is um young people are very brilliant.

You know, social media has made them that much more intelligent and ability to coordinate and connect in ways that as adults we're trying to catch up to where they are.

Uh, and so when we offer them things that are subpar to what they can see in other parts of their city or in other cities, um they take it upon themselves uh to find spaces to to join.

Um, and so you know, the work uh in talking to young people, whether it be on the district district side or in the aim space downtown, what continues to be reiterated from the voices of young people, because I do agree that it's problematic that they're not at the table with us now.

And I think, you know, what does it mean for us to normalize their voices in space?

As a part of AIM Downtown, we've hired uh many of the young people that were deemed problematic to help us with safety, um, to help us with um conflict resolution, violence prevention, coaching and supporting their peers, and they've been really, really powerful in space.

Um, when we've had, you know, hundreds and sometimes you know thousands of youth downtown.

If we're talking about special events and the they're able to communicate in an effective fashion, that me as a 49-year-old man, you know, I have a leverage point, but you know, it's one thing, it's a different thing for a young person to talk to another young person.

And so what they talk about often with us is um, you know, respect goes both ways, it's a mutual thing.

They they believe that um that uh there's some things that they can do to improve um the narrative of who they are in space, um, while also uh what does it mean when they clash with adults where they can feel the presence that their presence is not desired, and young people are very intelligent and they pick up on the nonverbal and verbal uh cues.

Um I think it's also important for us to remember when we talk about uh the number of young people in Allegheny County between the ages of twelve and eighteen, and then we talk about where we've had some concern with youth behavior, that number is a lot smaller than what our overall population is, and we have to be very careful about the dangers of a single narrative, and then what that narrative is when it's overlapped on certain populations.

And so uh we learn from Ferguson what can happen.

And if you look at the study of Richard Rothstein and the making of Ferguson, he describes uh what happens when you take a suburb of St.

Louis that is a predominantly black area and that is going through change and gentrification and then the clash that can happen between law enforcement and community.

And so I think we see this in other spaces coupled on and and uh compounded with um as was discussed the pressures of social media.

Uh when I talk to young people all the time, uh I tell them, you know, yes, I was once 16, 17, 18, but I have no clue what that means to be 16, 17, 18 in 2026, uh and the pressures that they're under and um around identity and belonging.

Um, whereas before, if uh you were dealing with isolation from your pair group, you may be talking about, you know, uh 10 to 15 peers.

Uh now you can go viral for all the wrong things.

Um, and so I when we talk to young people, I hear them tell me things like these aren't the decisions that I ultimately would want to make, but I cannot, my respect and my dignity uh and space means a lot.

So sometimes folks are doing things and engaging in behavior that they feel like they don't have another choice for.

Uh so I think it's important for us to consider that.

Um the algorithm of social media uh is really anchored in the exploitation of young people.

When we talk about sexual exploitation, when we talk about uh violence and how that carries space, young people share all the time that they believe that uh in order to be that influencer, that um they have to create a scene that is uh drama or is excitement because that's how you get your likes up, that's how you get your clicks up, uh, and that's how you get more followers.

And so uh we see in spaces across the country where now uh meta is being held accountable for you know some of the tools that are being used and the impact of depression, you know, something that was supposed to bring us together as a society has us more isolated and far more depression in space.

Young people deal with depression uh often, and so um one of the things that I found uh so uh phenomenal uh when I when I'm in, and I look forward to being in space, especially downtown with our youth that point around learning.

Uh they teach me far more than I have to offer, and when we watch them, uh they are the leaders and protectors of their own spaces.

Um they problem solve every single day, um, they protect, they parent one another, they provide the work of a social worker to one another.

Sometimes they show up as uh police officer or one another.

Um, I'm not saying that all of their behaviors are the behaviors that we would desire in space because that's absolutely not true.

Um we've uh unfortunately even lost uh the lives of a young person recently downtown.

And so any violence uh and every point of violence is unacceptable to me in space.

Uh, I think social decor is important.

Um I think that uh as we're talking about our young people, what was lost during the period of the pandemic, um, just because we said the pandemic was over and we open society back up, we have some families and some students that were able to navigate and persist and move on, transition fine, but others that have been stuck in the weeds more, and I think that we don't give enough time and conversation to what that looks like and what those impacts have had.

Um there's many clusters of young people that are dealing with homelessness, food insecurity.

Uh, and I'm again I'm not uh it's never acceptable to break the law.

That's not what I'm saying.

What I am saying is how well are we doing of a job to understand the individual stories.

Our young people are not monolithic.

It's not one size fits all, but how are we spending time and space to understand the variance uh of stories and the uh so um one of the things that we do within our work is relationship building uh and storytelling and to build the psychological relationship that's needed to build the trust.

We phased uh countless young people out of the downtown corridor uh that were stuck in space.

Many of our um not just teenagers, but um young 20, 21, 22-year-olds that have graduated or have not graduated that are just stuck in space.

Uh we've uh transitioned many to um career opportunities to um programs that can be of support to them.

Um we have um uh this mixed methodology of how we uh collect information and one of the ways that we uh connect is something that we call um the H's, which is high fives, handshakes, hellos, and it's a way for us to build rapport in space.

So we do um, you know, this positive patrolling, making sure that we have presence and proximity to our youth.

And since 2024, we've had 30,000 um of those H's in space.

We have a small team, but it's a really powerful team uh that's doing the work, uh coaching opportunities with young people.

We've had 900 over 900 um opportunities to have small coaching spaces uh sessions in space with young people.

And then we do check-ins, like if it is something where we've been able to mediate an issue uh or follow up on, you know, a referral.

Uh we do check-ins with young people.

We've had almost 1400 of those, as well as uh 670 uh specific interventions, and many of those are in collaboration with uh Pittsburgh Police, public safety around incidents that have risen to the point of violence.

Uh, we've been able to help support um many um issues that otherwise would have turned violent, getting weapons off of the street, uh preventing fights uh in many cases.

And so just saying that our young people are under a lot of stress, uh they're not monolithic, and here's the voice of uh a young person that I was with earlier today, and they wanted to make sure that this was shared out around their voices, um, that they believe, you know, that idea of nothing about them without them uh should occur, and that uh most are doing good things every single day that never make the six o'clock news that aren't, you know, talked about around this table, but these things are happening every single day with the majority of young people in our city, and we have to protect that narrative as we're also dealing with the issues of the most vulnerable among amongst us because uh the most wounded and vulnerable tell the most truth.

And so we need to understand the perspective of those that are dealing with complex trauma and its impact on them as well as our society at large.

Uh the um the point about mutual respect going both ways, um, the idea just because, you know, I'm a young, because that's the other thing.

I think we have to isolate the conversation of race uh when we're having this discussion because we're talking about a certain racial group uh when it comes to young people predominantly.

And so I think we can't gloss over it and pretend that that's not what we're saying where we're saying it, um, because back to that point about promise of space and back also to that point around uh who is desirable uh and whether it's implicit or explicit, just how that shows up.

And so I think creating the pro I'm not saying market square in the way it exists now is the space for our young people, but what does it look like for our city for community organizations and residents to collaborate on the creation of space that can be for young people because they're not looking for structured program.

They they'll tell you all the time, I don't want to go back to school after I've come out of school.

They want soft space where they can gather, where they can do some social media stuff, where they can engage with one another, um, and we're the free spaces for that to happen uh for them.

Um the other thing is that they wanted to be known that they do a lot of community service that doesn't oftentimes go and go notice, even in the downtown corridor, helping people out, taking care of elderly, um checking in with those that amongst us that are dealing with homelessness.

Um so there's just many things that they're engaged with that uh don't come out if we just keep the conversation as a part of that single narrative.

And so I'm honored to be around the table, uh open to collaborate and support in the conversation, um whether it be on the district side or like I said, in the community side with AIM.

Um what I will say is we have a process of shrinking the scenario uh because in many cases our young people were able to um operate um in the shadows, and so if I did a behavior and there wasn't somebody that can connect back to my coach to my parent to my teacher, the the behavior persisted.

And so, with our character coaches in space who have rapport with um parents, with coaches, with uh educators, one thing that I'm able to leverage on the district side is that when I see a young person, um, you know, if they're doing good, uh I celebrate it.

I let the principals know, I let the teachers know, I let parents know.

If there are problems and concerns and things that are alarming, we absolutely follow up that way as well.

And so when you shrink the scenario, uh and that person um becomes more than just a random person, becomes a name, and even making relationship between our business corridor downtown and our young people uh for future opportunities of engagement.

Uh this is what the work is about.

It's uh it's a powerful work.

Um I'm honored to be a part of the group that is building relationship with our young people.

Um they just have powerful stories.

They're very resilient uh and uh and brilliant individuals.

So just honored to be here today in any way that I can collaborate.

Thank you, Mr.

Rivers.

And just doing a quick time check is 2.40, so folks could um keep their opening remarks about five minutes.

I want to make sure that uh the members have time uh for QA as well.

But I do I don't, you know, hopefully take away uh, you know, from uh the impact of what you have to say.

So uh our our next panelist is Mr.

Al-Sadi.

If you could introduce yourself, uh your title and your organization.

Yeah, my name is uh Farouk Al-Said.

I am the director of operations at OneHood Media.

Um I would like to say that I'm you know uniquely qualified to be part of this conversation in this panel, largely for the fact that a lot of the young people that we're talking about from, you know, basically 18 and down that have been isolated as problems and and you know, some stress of the definition, that was who I was as a young person.

I spent a large portion of my teenage years incarcerated um for some for some really like serious charges.

Fortunately, my cases were acquitted, and I was able to, you know, kind of get on with my life.

Um, but I I spent a good bit of my senior year of high school um in jail where I lost the ability to play professional baseball, and I turned um eighteen in solitary confinement.

From then, I went on to be a K-3A educator and really working directly with the, you know, the most impacted people that we're really talking about right now.

Um at One Hood, we've been around for almost 20 years now in uh October, inshallah, we'll be celebrating our 20th anniversary, and I have been with the organization for almost nine years now, um, just you know, uh a little after I got to Pittsburgh.

And one thing we do is we work with young people directly um in the city, right?

From all across the socioeconomic spectrum, and a lot of them, you know, you you lot have engaged with um at this table.

And um we have a program called We Keep Us Safe, whereas it it initially started as a media literacy academy uh a few years ago, and then it kind of morphed into this political science, uh problems of democracy, youth development leadership academy where young people are really tackling the uh the things that we're talking about right now every day.

And in fact, right after this, we're going to, I'm sorry, uh, I'm going after the pro I'm going to to work on our program, which we host every Wednesday.

Um, we just had a youth panel this past Saturday that we've been putting into play for a good couple months prior to all of the, you know, kind of the fervor around the curfew and everything like that.

And um what we do with young people is specifically allow them to take the charge, right?

You know, one of our things of one hood is we always say we leave from the back.

And we we include the the people who are impacted the most and we allow them the platform to speak.

And what I like to think is like, you know, I don't I don't ever give any young person empowerment.

They already have power, right?

I just teach them how to kind of color in the lines once they come up with like a canvas or something like that, right?

So what we've been doing with the young people is really just kind of coalescing them and having authentic conversations with them and allowing them to reshape public safety in a way that suits them for what their vision of an inclusive future looks like um for however many years it goes.

The spectrum that we deal with uh is is essentially how like the federal government defines you from 26 to like 14.

That's kind of what we work with.

And we have a very this specific cohort of we keep it safe that we have is like our most multicultural, um, with like seven different languages being spoken.

We have postgraduate students in there, and we also got youngers that, you know, was like me that just coming off the roads and they're looking for that third space in some place that could really just be like safe and inclusive, where they don't have to worry about the pretense of like an adult talking at them however many hours out the day, they can kind of just come to us and just decompress.

Um, one thing that our youths have been like super super involved in is just like all of the public policy things that have been happening.

They've come here with city council um with me.

They they've been engaged with every single governmental official in the state, all the way from uh Governor Shapiro all the way to um city council members like yourself, some of them you've met personally.

Um, and they've had such amazing things to say, whether it's challenging uh challenging local officials or just posing questions and saying come out and help us and join the community.

Um, what we do is kind of like a culminating event called Fridays on Deck where where um Bubba Rivers is just talking about it.

We allow them to get out into the space and program areas where young people were removed from, very much like Market Square, right?

They come out um every summer we've been in uh the East Libya area and we're expanding now on the Hazelwood and the Hill District and basically programming these spaces where curfews have been enforced, right?

And we're allowing the young people to come out there and work directly with the community.

We provide arts and education resources, we provide food trucks, we provide live music, we just provide safety for young people autonomously from like the constraints of curfews and pretense and and just places where they don't feel welcome anymore.

And I think I can reiterate all the things Brother Rivers has just said because he said so many great things that I kind of wanted to say, but appreciate you, yeah.

Um, but the the thing that I will that I would just kind of leave off with is that the young people that we have are beyond I don't think brilliant is is a sufficient adjective to describe them.

But the thing is they come to me with questions about the number one question they have is why is nobody defending us?

Why are we being criminalized?

And why has this collective call for violence come to young people from adults?

And a lot of these people, a lot of these adults work with children.

The educators, their parents, and that's the most disappointing part.

Um our panel was specifically curated by young people.

I only moderated it.

They brought up every line of questioning, they gave me their QA, and I was like, Oh, okay, I gotta stick to the script.

You know what I mean?

Like 17 year old, like, yeah, you're talking about this today.

I'm like, cool, yeah, baby, I got it.

Like, this is what you want, I got it.

Um, but the number one thing is why are these adults so quick to call for collective punishment from us and to us, um, when they haven't given us an opportunity to speak for ourselves.

And I think that is the biggest thing that has these young people upset right now.

Um, is that any time it's just like, you know, we're adults, right?

Let's keep it tall.

If you tell us we're not gonna do something, we're gonna want to do it, right?

And that's just that's just a fact, right?

And young people, almost by virtue of their age and nature, is the challenge.

And every successful movement that we've had in politics, progressively, culturally, has come from young people, the Black Panthers.

They were young people.

People often forget Chairman Fred Hampton was 21 when he was murdered.

That's a that's a that's a young person.

The Freedom Riders, all of these people that we fancy as our most provocative and and and thought promoters, civil rights activists, all young people, right?

So, where would they have been in these situations today when we're in chambers talking about these things without them?

They would have kicked the door down, right?

Many opportunities.

My father was in the civil rights movement in the 70s, and this was one of the things that he'd constantly told me was nothing about us will follow us.

That's why our youth panel was called Nothing About Youth Without Youth.

So I'm just gonna end it there.

Um, we've been doing work for 20 years in in Pittsburgh and Inshallah.

We'll be doing it for another 20.

And um, yeah, thank you.

Thank you, sir.

And the next palace is an old friend.

Uh Ms.

James, if you can introduce yourself, your title as well as your organization.

Um, so I'm here wearing multiple hats as well.

Um, I sit on the board of a the Alliance for Police Accountability and Rise Up 365.

Um, so Brandy Fisher was invited to be here, but she had a conflict.

Um so I'm here as a board member, um, but I'm also the president and CEO of Youth Places, which um we have 30 years of providing the third spaces for teens in Pittsburgh.

Um we have been in up to 25 neighborhoods in the city of Pittsburgh over the course of our um and our main core work is the third space.

So it's brick and mortar, it's providing that safe space.

Um we were also one of the first to come downtown and back in 2018 and say, where are all these young people going?

And from that point, we opened a facility down on Penn Avenue um in 2019.

Um there's a lot that my colleagues in this work have already said.

Um, so I kind of wanna put something on record around this large group of teens, because that's where this conversation has started.

Um, and I've written some notes because I was called in at the last minute, so um, sorry if I'm not looking you each in the eye.

Um, but large groups of teens are not automatically a threat, and I think we have to be careful uh not to confuse youth presence with youth violence, and those are two totally separate challenges.

One is behavioral modification work, and one is young people deserve to hang out with their friends and be themselves and normalizing that.

Um the solution, there are many third spaces.

Let's just be clear around this entire city.

Um, but I can tell you that the journey to getting to those third spaces is increasingly and incredibly hard.

We have situations where we're offered, all of us have been offered small spaces, and we're expected to build unicorns in dark spaces.

And so I think that we there is no collective agreement between the city, the nonprofit leaders, the resource providers, whether that's foundations or donors, about what it's going to take.

And so one of my calls to action is around who else is not at this table, um, aside from youth, that there's no collective agreement on what it will take.

When you do pose three space, a third spaces to philanthropy or to any type of grant cycle, the question becomes going back to what Dr.

Valerie was talking about, this academic enrichment piece, right?

And we have been screaming from the rooftops for years that that is a yes and approach.

And it's not just about the kid going from a C average to a B average, it's about the kid who needs a lot more nuanced work than people are willing to support.

So when she spoke about the social and emotional development components, I'll give a brief story and then I'll move on.

But when I first took over in youth places 10 years ago, there was a lot of chatter about effectiveness, you know, reputation, things of that sort.

One of the things that I fought back on was this idea of SEL, social and emotional learning and development, because we are one of the few groups that only deal with the teen population.

And so when I started pushing back on that, no one was receptive.

They're like, no, we need the grades to change, we need this to change.

And so I then conducted an ACES study back in the early 90s, Kaiser Permanente put forth something called ACEs, which is adverse childhood experiences.

The average childhood experience that an adult can function as have a basic quality of life.

They can have three adverse childhood experiences, and that could be no food in the home or something like that.

It does not take into context very urban-based context.

So we did an ACES study on our youth at our sites, and our kids had an average score of nine by 12 years old, and I think that's really critical to understand that you're not dealing with young people whom have necessarily the agency to be able to improve their lives on their own.

They need access to quality individuals and quality third spaces.

We also have to contextualize this idea around these youth need to be broken up into clusters.

There's some youth who are highly re-traumatized on a consistent basis, and their only way to respond is through bad behavior, as we want to call it, and I put that in quotations.

There are youth who are literally just hanging out.

They have all the resources they need at home.

Their parents said it's fine.

We trust you, go hang out with your friends.

And then there's in between young people who are caught in the in between, you know, their parents may work a lot, whatever the situation is, but we can't conflate the issue.

We can't conflate the groups, and we can't conflate the teens.

That's that's the there's a high need for supports and investments and spaces for that 16 to 24 failure to launch group.

Um the positive youth development uh sector, as you want to call it, is we are all aging out of this work.

And and that's something that is hard to acknowledge.

We're aging out of this work, we are becoming more and more disconnected as our parents were disconnected from what we thought we knew at 1617.

We're becoming increasingly disconnected from what's happening on the ground, and we need to establish a younger workforce, to be honest, who can carry this work forward, and all of us who are at this table know that that workforce comes from this demographic of young people, that's where this workforce was built.

This positive youth development workforce was built off of the kids who everybody rejected in the past in the 90s, in the 80s, in the 70s, and so if there's opportunities to look at workforce opportunities, there's opportunities to understand our youth better, to contextualize the situations and opportunities to strengthen the third spaces.

These third spaces, we can't have 200 square foot rooms, and you expect us to have 100 kids walk through the doors.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr.

Ford, you can introduce yourself and title your organization.

Yes, Leon Ford here, and I am the uh director of external affairs and co-founder of the Here Foundation.

And I'll keep my comments uh brief.

Um, you know, what we're about is is really uh inspiration, education, and connection.

Um, and I'm really inspired by all the comments that I heard here uh today.

Um one of the things that well, two things that come to my mind immediately is um, you know, hearing Brother Jason speak uh because he has referred uh he and uh Vaughn Matt and has referred uh several young people uh to the boxing gym, right?

So uh I'm a boxing coach at Team 4 and 2 Boxing.

Um and on several occasions they have reached out to me, like, yo, did you see this kid?

And they were a little concerned, and you know, that kid was in the boxing program traveling the country.

I mean, we've taken uh kids all over the country, was take taking kids to Puerto Rico uh to train and things like that.

And uh on any given day, we got about 30 kids at the boxing gym, um, just you know, taking advantage of that space.

I just wanted to call that out because um there are a lot of different spaces where young people exist uh that they're really benefiting from.

We have uh six athletes ranked in the top 10 nationally right now, which we're really proud of.

The second comment that I make is, thank you.

Uh the second comment that I make is um at the Hair Foundation, we're launching this summer, uh, the community innovation fund, um, which is really inspired by the BME model.

Uh be me uh is a national organization and over 10 years ago.

Uh many uh brother uh Cornell and Jason Rivers are both BME brothers, and when we were nominated to go uh and and be a part of B Me, we received a 10,000 dollar grant.

Um, and uh I got nominated in 2015, and so with the community innovation fund, I began to think about like how do I reverse engineer who I am today, right?

Um and and kind of go back to who I was when I became uh a member of B Me.

And uh I say that because uh the Hair Foundation and our program committee were wrestling with uh the the qualifications or requirements to be uh nominated, and um I think about my story, and I was shot when I was 19 years old, and that's where a lot of my community work started.

Um, and so with the uh guidance of some of the people at the table, uh, and also some of the folks behind me, I would love you your help, um, to kind of help me, you know, structure what the community innovation fund will look like because uh we're gonna be nominated, so we're gonna have cohorts.

The first cohort, the inaugural cohort is going to be uh one leader from each of the six zones who will receive a ten thousand dollar grant along with uh mentorship, right?

So we'll have a nonprofit organization within their zone who will become their kind of like big brother, big sister, um, but also their fiscal sponsor.

Um, and then we'll teach them grant writing, we'll teach them mediation, we'll teach them meditation for the self-care point.

Um, and so I say that to say this is another way for us to empower some of those young people who have graduated who really care about uh community and want to be uh empowered and to connect them with some of the uh the leaders who who have been around uh to mentor them.

So if y'all could give me some uh feedback on that really soon, actually, because we want to disperse, we want to nominate them and and identify them by the end of June and uh maybe give them you know the money and start the training in July.

So thank you, Lana.

Always good to see you.

Likewise, Brother Jones.

Introduce yourself, your title organization.

Cornell Jones grew violent and adventure coordinator for the city of Pittsburgh.

Uh my job is working with everything from dealing with uh the outreach workers, um, law enforcement community.

Um if it's okay with you, uh Mr.

Mosley, Councilman, I wanted to take my couple minutes and give it to Ayo since he's boots on the ground for the situation.

Thank you, sir.

Yes, sir.

You can we're uh Dr.

Adams Bass was take that.

Yes, sir.

What's up, guys?

Welcome to C.

Introduce yourself, your title and your organization, please.

Thanks for joining us.

How y'all doing today?

My name is Io Day Young.

I'm the violence prevention coordinator for Zone Five for Reach.

Um, I've been doing violence prevention work for over 20 years throughout the east side in the city of Pittsburgh.

Um, Cornell, thank you again for uh seeing your time to me.

Um, this first off, I like to say that um this is a good idea that you had by um pulling these groups together, but I will say that there's been this is the third panel that has happened over the past few weeks, and no members from Reach were invited to be on those panels, and I didn't see any youth invited to be on those panels.

And we have a pretty large presence in downtown Pittsburgh throughout the east side and through several different locations throughout the city of Pittsburgh because we were awarded the grant to do violence prevention work in Pittsburgh.

So we're kind of boots on the ground in hours that a lot of other people aren't.

Let's just say that much.

Um, so starting with uh Market Square, from our perspective and the work that we do on a daily basis, it is a disconnect between like everyone, like a lot of few people said here, our kids aren't a monolith, and we get that.

So the part of the kids that we work with are not the population who would really come and sit on the panel and want to have these conversations about where they want to go to and where they want to be at because whoever's the coolest kid in their circle said we're meeting in market square and we're going to go do this instead.

So kids choose to go and be in those places.

Nobody is saying, and it's getting characterized in wrong language, and I think it's getting kind of done purposely at this point.

I haven't spoken to anybody that said that they want a curfew for our kids in the city of Pittsburgh.

I work with Cornell on a regular basis.

Great strong black man in our community.

I've met our public safety director, Sheldon.

He has a great reputation throughout the city of Pittsburgh.

I've worked with uh Commander Nova Cell and different commanders, the Pittsburgh.

I haven't heard anybody say that we want to get a curfew.

And these are some of the reasons why there's really nowhere to take all of these kids.

We don't have the vehicles or the manpower to do it, and it's all gonna fall on probably the outreach workers and the police, which given more headaches of overtime.

So nobody I've been around in any of these meetings or speaking any of that curfew language.

It's coming from people who might not be in those rooms to hear the actual conversations.

So they're getting the trickle down effects.

The things that are happening in Market Square, that's just a rule in Market Square.

It's not a rule meant to hurt kids, stop kids.

In all honesty, Jason will tell you this.

We don't bother kids in Market Square.

They're perfectly fine.

You know when we bother kids?

When they start doing dumb stuff.

That's when we approach them and say stuff to them.

Other than that, they're fine chilling in market square.

The police don't say anything to the kids until they start doing dumb stuff.

A few weeks ago, I was walking through Market Square, and kids were throwing bottles on the original fish market.

I said, Stop doing that.

Another young man barked at me, talked to me super crazy.

I said, Yo, why are you talking to me like that?

Immediately.

Keep talking, old head.

I got something for you.

He went and got something and had it under his waist and followed me aggressively through Market Square.

I went to the Fairmont, sat down in the Fairmont, and called the police to come.

Officer King, this young man sat in front of the Fairmont with his hands under his shirt with his friends around him, as if they wanted waiting for me to come outside.

Now I ain't stupid with all my big bad outreach.

I stayed inside.

Seeing what he had under his shirt.

That moment right there clicked to me and said, a rule gotta get put in place, something.

Like just something.

Not nothing to, and it turns out that that same young man that did that to me, we end up running into on Friday out in Homewood in an abandoned house doing some other mayhem.

And Jason knew his whole family and showed me who he was and everything right on the spot.

Something needs to be in place.

The cis program that we all knew that some of you guys knew from when we were younger, that's no longer the same.

It's optional for kids to come now.

It's not mandatory like it used to be.

Today school at the academy pick up, that's not anymore.

Schuman Center only has 12 beds.

To go to the county jail, a kid must commit an extreme offense in order to go to the county jail.

A couple days ago, a kid stole a car in the morning and he was outside by two o'clock in the afternoon back in Market Square looking at me like I was crazy.

There's just no rules.

Like there's and our kids know that there's no rules.

And there's nothing wrong with just a rule or two.

There's just nothing wrong with that.

I'm not like nobody's advocating like my reputation in the community is solid.

Everybody knows I am not advocating for the criminal industrial complex to lock up black boys.

You know that.

You know Kahari isn't, you know, Cornell isn't.

You know nobody at this table is, I know Brother Sheldon isn't.

A few rules.

The people that I talk to, I have a massive social media following.

The people that I talk to on social media, they just want rules.

They don't want, nobody is rooting for our kids to be locked up harassed or anything by the police.

They don't even want to do the paperwork for kids.

They just want a rule or two.

And I think that with all of our collective minds, we could come up with rules that there's their spaces for kids to go to.

And one of the main things that get kids in the room is dollars, stipends.

$25 to come to groups.

Zone 412 does that.

They give kids money to come to groups and kids go to those groups.

That'll get kids in the room faster than just.

We have to find a way to meet them where they're at and be kind of accepting of some of the things that we might see when we let them in our spaces if we want them in those spaces.

Can't be stiff with them, can't talk to them like we're not of the same elk and of the same level.

If you're in your 40s, you kind of know something about the hip hop generation in the hip hop world.

You know something about it.

That's the relationship point that anybody can connect with kids on.

It's not rocket science.

But again, just speaking for the people on my timeline and who I'm around, who I deal with, is just a few rules to put in place to get our kids in order.

It's nothing extreme, it's nothing crazy.

And then supporting these programs that we have to have the capability of doing it.

I worked at youth places.

Cynthia, it's not what she's doing and the sites that she has all over the city.

Other organizations really don't have that.

Kids will come in the door by the drones if there was something behind that monetarily to put kids to make them want to come in the doors and say, I don't want to go downtown.

I want to go to this because this program is paying me.

And then the early 2000s, there was money around to do that.

We had cleanup crews.

It was like, it was like somebody in the early 2000s realized that that violence isn't a thing that just goes away, and and key bad behavior isn't a thing that goes away.

So maybe we should fund something consistently to keep it going over the years.

And there they was, it wasn't just the city's job program.

Youth places have their own summer work program.

That took hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it serviced kids from all over the county, and it made a lot of those kids integrate and know each other.

That's another thing that's missing.

Those one uniting events that we could bring together and have kids mingling and mixing with each other.

So I'm glad thank you, Cornell for letting me say this, because I just wanted to bring some realness to the conversation.

I'm not saying that nobody else isn't, but just between the things that we get fed online and the things that might come in your algorithm and the whispers you might hear from certain corners, is really not that deep.

Everybody is saying the same thing, like just a little order is all the people really want.

All right.

Yeah, Mr.

Young.

Please don't stay at the table.

I gotta stay here.

Yeah, stay at the table.

Yeah, and and I and I appreciate you know the feedback because you don't know, I'm sorry, we uh you know, uh, you know, we work together so close and we're putting together um the D9 Street team, so my apologies for the oversight.

No doubt, um, you know, of not having you initially at the table.

I'm I thank you for making yourself available.

Please, you know, stay at the table for the remainder of the conversation.

You know, your insight is invaluable in the insight that you've brought to work that my office and you and Jay Rock and Boaz and Leon are working on with Commander Hoys and the East Liberty Chamber of Congress.

I think it's gonna be transformational this summer.

So thank you for joining us and Bat and Cleanup is my my good friend uh Commander Lance Hoy.

Council Mosey, if I could real quick, yeah.

Cause unfortunately I have a three o'clock myself and uh councilman Straussberger both have a three o'clock that we have to step away the table from.

But first and foremost, I just want to thank you all.

Um thank you all for the work that you do, both those at the table and those in the audience.

Um think the work you do all do is critical.

Um took a number of notes, had a number of questions, and if it's still going, I'll come back in.

But I just want to acknowledge and thank you all for being here today.

And and we and we can I can have my office gather up questions and you know, continue to because I think this is really just the impetus.

This is not gonna be a one-off, like this is has to be the beginning of not just conversations, but actual work that we're gonna do in collaboration across a lot of different organizations.

Uh was there anything you wanted to say, Councilwoman?

You know, I realized that I'm entering the conversation late and I'm I'm having to leave early.

I will be you know tuning in online um after the fact so I can catch everything because I've just um this has brought together a lot of um a lot of the pieces that I thought I heard, but it confirms a lot of what I heard and and affirms a lot of of my assumptions, and that's it's a good thing, I think.

And um, uh I do uh you know, I do want to make myself available and be part um in any way that I I can from this position in um these uh not just one-off but holistic and long-term solutions.

So thank you for convening this councilman and thank you for everyone for being here today and for the work that you do every day, both at the table and and in the audience.

Thank you, Council President, and thank you, Councilwoman, and now Bat and Cleanup is uh my good friend where I work with very closely.

I think we probably talk at least once a day.

Uh the the new newly minted commander from zone five, Commander Lance Hoyson.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, uh Councilman for uh for hosting me.

Thanks to all members of uh council for having us here.

Uh I I just want to appreciate I just want to express genuine appreciation for everyone on this panel for your opinions.

Everyone in the room who who works on these efforts uh to help us with this issue.

Um, you know, and I'll explain why it's important to have everybody involved.

Uh in my opinion.

Um my name's Lance Hoys and I'm the commander of zone five station.

Prior to that, I was the uh the night watch commander with citywide oversight for a few years.

Uh I'm finishing my eighteenth year on the job.

My educational background is is in a little bit of sociology and statistics, so I understand and I appreciate some of the things Dr.

Dr.

Levinson was saying that, you know, statistically, the vast majority, 90% or more of a group that's gathering is there for for legitimate reasons.

Whether it's juveniles hanging out, whether it's adults gathering for First Amendment expression, you may have five to ten percent of a crowd that engages in criminal activity and it gives the entire crowd a bad name.

And I think that's what we need to separate here.

I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution to this.

We obviously don't want to treat all juveniles like they're criminals because fifty are gathered in market square and two of them get in a fight.

That being said, I think I'm gonna kind of piggyback on on Steel Little Bios Thunder here.

Um I think we need to add a seventh C to Dr.

Bass's presentation about the ways we need to engage with these juveniles.

And I think for those most serious offenders, for those kids that are out there stealing cars, I mean we got kids we're catching every other day in stolen cars, and I think that seventh C needs to be consequences.

I think for those most serious offenders who are giving the crowd a bad name, then there needs to be an understanding that the police are gonna do their job because we're failing that that young man or that young woman.

If we just allow them to continue down that path of criminality that they're on, I think we're failing their families, and I think we're failing the our the our residents and our visitors whose cars are being stolen, who are victims of a robbery.

So I think we need a you know, we need to approach this from from multiple angles.

I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution to this.

We need to direct the vast majority of these juveniles to the appropriate resources to the to the third space, to the resources they need, and for those couple that that just aren't getting the message, we can force them to those to those resources through through some consequences.

And I think um, while I can't speak as the zone five commander on behalf of the entire Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, I can say that we uh in zone five are ready and and prepared to to do our part to that end.

So thank you again to you.

And and just as a follow-up, I really want to thank you um, you know, for the way you show up to the conversations that we've been having, you know, uh uh over the past few months, you know, and being in conversations where folks have a lot of fear and anxiety or frustration with what's going on, and like, you know, how can we triple and quadruple and contemple the beds, you know, up uh up at Schumann, and you're always the first one around the table.

Like, look, that that's not gonna be the solution.

And and and and you know, and throwing a whole lot of money up, at least over top is not the solution.

You know, solution is what we've been working on, and I'll talk about a little bit later, the D9 Street team and the work that IO and Boaz and Jay Rock are doing, um, you know, with our office to identify folks in the community and young people as well, people that are actually part of that demographic to be part of playing a central role in and making their community safer.

And I think that goes along with what Dr.

Adams Bass was saying, and I think that's what what I thought was like so transformative and unique about when IOJ Rock and Boaz brought the idea to me, you know, that we're gonna roll out next month in the community.

You know, was that the young people that are part of that age group are gonna play a central role in making their community safer and being engaged, so it's not gonna be that top-down, but it's really just a bottom up, and we're just playing a facilitation role and not um, you know, guiding that, but you in in you know, playing the role that you play, sending that message, it gets across to the community, you know, a lot stronger.

We say actually actually your money's better spent working with the D9 Street team than just trying to throw extra extra dollars up at least over time, particularly when we're talking about this specific issue, you know, involving that, you know, 16 um to 25 demographic.

Um so now um that we that we completed the presentation.

I want to thank everybody for their patience.

I thought that was long, but I I think we've been talking about this a lot for the last month, so I think it deserved the amount of time um that that we gave.

I don't think 60 minutes would have been enough, you know, to to really, you know, and actually, you know, this 90 minutes that we've taken is isn't enough either, but I think that I think we kind of got a width and a breadth of of the conversation from a whole of a variety of angles.

And I think if I could still remember the order of appearance, I think uh our first guest was uh councilwoman Warwick and uh and hopefully I can I can remember how everybody showed up.

And if anybody is in a hurry, I know you know the afternoon is running long that you know, let me know if you need to jump in and ask questions.

But councilwoman Woolwick, I yield the floor to you.

Um okay, yeah, thank you.

Thank you everyone for for being here and for you know for taking the time.

Um so you know, I have some thoughts, I have questions as well.

Um I did I do quickly, so uh Dr.

Levinson, you had said right in your opening remarks, um, and I think this is maybe part of what I kind of, you know, gut reaction uh concerned me the most with this m specifically around this market square policy is uh you said that we passed a law.

We did not pass a law.

So that did not come to city council.

And we actually had um when I first came to council, I think it was uh uh former councilman Smith actually tried to pass uh curfew ordinance and it failed.

So I do want to stress, you know, that I, you know, I think this First Amendment issue is important, and um, and this notion that while they may have been working together with uh public safety, the idea that a nonprofit organization, which is Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership is, um, can come in and have a permit in a public space, right, that uh restricts movement of residents just because they feel like it.

I mean, I understand you can have a permit for a private event, that's fine, right?

You can permit a private event, do whatever you can permit a birthday party at a at a shelter, and but this is not what that is, right?

This is a public space, so um, and also, of course, you know, with the rules, and I do understand I like I I understand the problem, right?

I don't want to pretend like everything's you know, hunky dory and market square and there's no issues.

There, of course, are, but you know, with the policy like this, it's the enforceability.

Like, how does that even work?

And who's it for, right?

Is it for my, you know, um, and I um and so uh Dr.

Adams Bass, when you talked, it struck me when you talked about sort of like the black and white, the way that young people think in black and white, I can say when I told my I have a teens, I have two teenage twins, and when I told them about this, because that one is downtown.

So I was like, hey, listen, there's this thing in Farquett Square, um, uh you know, you you can't go into market square without a chaperone.

She was like, that's BS.

I was like, or immediate, right?

With without any prompting.

So I you know, I think sort of how, you know, how the teens would react.

Um, and and my thought, and maybe this is a question for for Dr.

Bass, just about kind of this notion of like the the pygmalion effect, I guess or the opposite of of like you know, like the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Like if we're saying, I mean, the media, regardless of what we are intentions at the city of Pittsburgh, and I get that, right?

At the city of Pittsburgh, we are not, you know, Director Williams is not trying to criminalize kids.

Nobody at this table is trying to do that.

I, you know, I don't think our police department is, but the reality is that what is happening out in the ecosystem, the comments online, the you know what I mean, the news reports is demonizing our kids in a very real way.

And so I want to ask about that.

Like this notion of like a self-fulfill, like, well, if they're gonna say that we're, you know, I I wanted to ask you about that.

Thank you.

Um, so I want to I want to say a couple things.

Um, yep, the black and white, you hit it on the nose, you live it when you have children in your own household.

And then I want to say, you know, as I was sitting here listening to the panelists who were doing amazing, awesome work.

Hats off to all of you.

Um, I I want to say, what would happen if you had a group of young people trained to elevate all the good, to challenge the algorithm, because you know, there was a time where there were, you know, you could see positive stories on the news.

You might get one a week, maybe.

And that's not where young people are going to get their information, that's where adults are going to get their information.

So I think the spaces, like this is where I was saying those small businesses, or maybe it's you know, within the council, there's a space for young people to write the narrative to elevate the narrative of all this good, right?

So they are learning those technical skills, not just learning to say meet here with the cool young person, but they are learning to elevate that good that is happening in the city of Pittsburgh.

And that is changing and challenging the narrative.

Whereas right now, they're primary consumers of media, right?

Someone might want to debate with me about that, but they're primarily consuming the media and using it as a way to engage in a particular way.

However, if we think about bringing those young people to the table in a way that they are able to rewrite that digital narrative, that can happen in short term, in my opinion, because they are spelt at the use of technology.

And so just like they can say, meet with the cool kid, you know, they can say, here's what we're doing, and they can rewrite that narrative right away.

And I think that one helps them feel seen that negates some of that self-fulfilling prophecy, right?

When we can acknowledge all the good that they are doing, when we can acknowledge the ways that some of them are serving as mentors to one another and governing one another sooner than later, like immediately, I think that that does deter some of that self-fulfilling prophecy because they are being recognized and honored for all that is good.

They're being recognized and honored for their willingness to collaborate, their willingness to do those things.

And right now, we're only hearing that when we are on the ground, right?

When we are face to face with that young person, because it's highly unlikely that's going to show up in the algorithm or it's going to show up in the news.

What happens when those young people are writing those press releases like this quote, Mr.

Riversborne and sending it, pushing it to the local radio station as well as pushing it in the digital media spaces, the technology that they're using.

So I do believe that we have to publicly acknowledge all that is good with young people.

You know, if you remember, you know, I'm dating myself when, you know, at school, they would come on the loudspeaker and say, Today we want to honor, you know, councilman Warwick for on-time attendance every day.

Where are we doing that for adolescents in this community?

I mean, I this is not just Pittsburgh, but we're talking about Pittsburgh now.

Where are we doing that for all the young people versus that one young person who's been elevated and highlighted nationally or locally for all they do?

So that is one way to begin to establish that relationship to acknowledge that young people are contributing members of the society and that they matter in a positive way, right?

Because right now, you know, as I heard, the percentages of the young people who are agitators in those spaces are smaller even than the young people who are in those spaces.

So I feel like that's a low-hanging fruit, you know, in a way that acknowledges who they are, what their contributions are, and the good that they are doing.

I think we we could probably do that in relatively short time.

Thank you for your question.

Um Cynthia, did you wanna?

No.

Okay.

No, I just want to say, I mean, just to clarify for the record that from what we've heard about the um, I think we're all aware that it was a special events permit, but the special event is 300 days, and that's the that's you know, the special event, we understand that, but it is 300 days, and I think that's the piece that's kind of tricky for us.

So I think it's also important.

Um Dr.

Adams, and I agree with 100% with you.

I think in addition, like, you know, Jason knows, Mr.

Rivers knows that one of the things that we like to do is when a young person, even though when they were in the streets and they were getting caught up in, you know, people known for that right there, but when they're making this transition, you know, this young person that we just met with uh I think it was yesterday, um.

They're graduating in a couple days.

You know what I mean?

Like, you know, that we're going back to that house that we had that intervention with them and gonna celebrate that the graduation with that.

So as much as we're you know celebrating that person who's already doing great, I want to make sure that we're continuing to start and celebrate the ones who are making these changes because people looking for attention, you know what I mean.

A lot of this stuff honestly is about a lot of attention.

That's why I was talking about a lot of the social media and things like that.

These are geniuses.

These are geniuses, these are young people that I wish I knew how to organize the way that they organize right now.

And honestly, we don't want to take that genius away from them, and we don't want to take that passion away from them.

Um, so like being able to get them in spaces, those third spaces, um, those spaces to be able to help them, um, to be able to help uh find the purpose in this type of stuff that's not gonna get them jammed up in the system, um, is is key for that type of stuff.

Um, uh these the other thing is the there has to be a method that I'm sorry, that I didn't mean to cut you off on it, but it has to be a method that because when we're dealing with the households, it's not even just that kid, it's that kid going to a household situation where there where there's so many levels of um trauma of lack of resources and things like that.

That's um, and so it's so important that we work together as the city, county, you know, youth places, every single program that that's why I always talk about the village piece because all of these different families um are needing some situations.

There's some everyone that when the families are like, listen, uh my child is going downtown, you know, and getting caught up on stuff.

I got I got six other kids at the house.

I can't focus on.

So I'm like, how could mom or dad or they're good people?

How do we give them the support to be able to help them deal with what they're dealing with?

Because what's gonna happen is they're gonna continue to go downtown, they're gonna continue to stay out late and get caught up in stuff, but how do we as the the village?

This is part of the conversation to me that's very important, keep them from getting caught up, you know, from visiting a lot of houses and doing interventions.

There were houses that were happy that that child wasn't around because they were locked up.

I'm like, we can't let that be the situation.

These the we got to be able to find out how can we help?

How can we tap into the thousands of nonprofits that we have in Allegheny County?

How do we work together?

How do we tap in from the city and county resources and deal with the foundation community to be able to find out what we need to do to be able to tap in to those households to be able to help them and say, Listen, man, this is like this is a no judgment zone right here.

Listen, we want to help you to be able to deal with the situation, even if that person is incarcerated.

How do we tap into a resource to be able to support that person who's already incarcerated to be so when they come outside from those in those walls or whatever, we're able to give them a support so they could be successful.

We want we want people to win.

You know what I mean?

We want people to win.

We don't want um it it hurts it, it hurts to see what we see when we're when we're downtown, when we're in Market Square and in the community and things such as that.

But there's also a level that to me, while we're working to be able to plug in these sys these programs and all that type of stuff that we're working to be able to fix and help with the people in the community, while we're working on that, there has to be some type of structure to be able to save somebody's life.

So I I understand that some people are upset at that structure, but it's almost like we're working backward.

I said that a couple days ago.

It's almost like we're working backwards so that we're able to build this stuff right here, so that we're at a point where we don't need that type of structure anymore.

We don't need this guideline.

I don't know the roller skin, all that stuff would be gone.

But right now, to be able to save somebody's life, you know, it was already mentioned earlier that there was somebody that was killed, you know what I mean, in that situation.

You know, the the these are the things that we're hearing about.

And and you we're not hearing about the the amount of the um interventions that the uh the outreach teams had to do on a regular basis.

The amount of homeless young people that are downtown that the outreach members and people like that are taking home and given a bus pass for today because they're they're stranded downtown because they're going bed, they're going couch to couch.

So it's a big situation right now.

Um it's it's even bigger than the just the downtown thing.

You know what I mean?

This is just one of the one of the one of the out out the outcomes of what's happening with the situation.

So I said it before, there's this what I said that all hands on deck mindset, that's not a cliche.

That's the piece of us having to understand that we're seeing the the the effects of so much from the COVID and and then but then we're seeing a lot of broken situations and households, but it takes the takes all of us being able to strategically come together with a I'm saying this again with a no-judgment mindset to be able to say, listen, you specialize in this.

Oh, you got a boxing program.

Coach, how are you specializing this?

Oh, this is the cool the thing to understand.

Um Miss James right here, she has programs all over the county.

We got people coming from all over the county.

Somebody told me recently that they got kids that are coming in from Ohio, coming downtown.

So you can't deal with these situations with just a local type situation.

You gotta come with a mindset of a lot, not just like countywide, countywide.

And then other thing is I'm blessed to be able to, you know, a lot of us are blessed to be able to tap into other um other cities that are dealing with the same exact situation.

Um the challenge with that is this is new to everybody.

This is new to everybody.

Everyone's throwing ideas back and forth that, oh, that didn't work for you, that type of stuff.

And in Pittsburgh, compared to a lot of other places, they all have like heavy uh curfews and and extremely aggressive.

Our stuff is not nearly as aggressive, you know, with that type of stuff.

In fact, theirs is citywide, ours is dealing with this with an area where that we know that everyone's coming to to be able to try and bring some orders so that people that could actually have some type of support because we realize it's supporting structures because we realize if that's supportive structures that are not there, people are gonna get hurt.

People are gonna get hurt.

And the thing is, the people that are saying that that's a mess and things like that.

I want them to say uh realize that and watch the videos that are going around all over social media and the families that are saying, if that was my family, I'll go down, I would do this and this, this and this, and it's building a lot, it's like a uh like a like a popcorn that's keep on shaking, and it's getting closer and closer to a lot of families that don't play.

So when I say don't play, I'm talking about that are about those streets, and they're saying things about our kids.

We want to make sure that there's a safety uh situation for everybody, so that some of these adults who are like that that adult that was in that bus and things like that, like that if that was my family, I'd go see them.

We're trying to stop a lot of stuff and uh put a structure to a point in a situation where people aren't having those structures.

So in a lot of ways, we're saving lives with this.

So people don't believe me, they think it's crazy, but uh but the the structures that we need when I'm when I'm talking to these families aren't there to the point where they want the criminal justice system to give them that structure, and we're trying to stop this type of situation from happening by putting these type of structures there and saying, in fact, if the if the people who are part of the village, if you could find somebody that could go and go with you to that situation to be able to go into that place, we want that.

We also want mentoring partnerships to step up.

We also want the fraternities and sororities and the faith-based community to be able to step up, be able to say, I'll be that that person.

This is opportunity for all of us to be able to step up to really be who we're supposed to be, so that through this situation.

So, um, and I believe that we will we'll make it through.

That's that's the faith that I have.

So I do want to um I and and I I appreciate it, but I I do want to just sort of caution for us at the city, you know, and I I I understand the the concept, right?

Of like the community needs to step up, the parents need to step up, the all like this, but that's we we're we're the city, right?

And we and we can't control what parents do, and we can't control if you know some group or another group decides to come down so and or help or volunteer.

Um, so that's actually one thing that I wanted to kind of shift toward.

And and I I will say too, just quickly, you know, with Market Square, you know, we had this huge opening of market square for the NFL, and it was Brandy at um at the uh 365 um panel.

You know, it's this beautiful thing at this brand new square, and it's, and I think she said, you know, it's pretty, and we want to come down and enjoy and and we're saying like no, not for you, right?

And um, and and we're doing that, and I think there was one one young man on the panel who just said, he said that you know, just recently a friend of his had been shot, and it was like nobody even flinched, it was just like we just kept on going with the discussion, right?

So it's like you have the experience in, you know, in perhaps his home community, I don't know what neighborhood he was from, you know what I mean, where a friend of his was shot, and it's like and we just move on, yet we're just you know freaking out about market square and the businesses and like the potted plants or whatever, you know.

So I I think that I I don't know.

I I I can't speak for teens.

Of course, you you all are working with teens, but I can imagine that that um that that is noticed.

At any rate, what I did want to ask though is uh a little bit, and perhaps Commander, this is for you.

Uh we heard it at the 365 a little bit around the numbers, and it was there was a very stark difference between this time last year and this time this year, to the point of saying like maybe it was like five incidences last year and something like 20 some.

I don't I don't remember what then, but it was a very stark difference.

I'm not sure if you have specific to Market Square or I I would not have them downtown.

So was it downtown?

I believe it was downtown.

January, and the end of April, I guess, like so 20 25 to 95.

And I was, and this is I I feel like, because this this was not said at the last panel, and I feel like that's something, and I get this is a new admit, and again, I really want to stress.

I am I'm there's no, nobody here is trying to harm our kids.

There's no, I just but I think sometimes, you know, this is a new administration.

Uh, you know, this folks are new in their roles, many, you know, haven't even been for a year.

I really think that as a city and all of us, what is different about what we are doing?

I I recognize there's this thing with the teen takeovers, but these have been happening since 2019.

I mean, if you look at sort of the history of teens, you know, these things of kids gathering is not new, right?

So what, and I mean, really, I'm not saying we can answer it here, but like really a deep dive with the folks who were on the ground last year.

You know, what were we doing last year that we are doing differently this year?

And I don't know if I don't I'm not asking for an answer, but if anyone has comments, I don't I don't think that this is like succinctly just one thing that could be answered.

Um I think that like the divestment of yeah, community organizations who have been doing this work, um, the stringency and the I'm gonna say this again.

Uh I know this went viral, but the political vagueness of having to put these RFP through and all of the language attached to the stop the violence grant and all these other things that makes the organizations like myself, like reach other organizations, it really makes our job hard, man.

Like it really does, that we're expected to do more with less in times.

Um, in a lot of the situations where we're not aware of what certain officials and in city government feel about the community, as it were.

Um, I know anecdotally, I have a reputation in the city, so I know when people certain people see me coming, they think that this radical life scale Malcolm X guy is coming, and I'll be there.

That's fine.

Um, because I have a vested interest in my community.

I wish that there was other city officials that share the passion that I do and the other people in this panel do about our young people.

Um, specifically to address your question.

There's a collective understanding that once the administration's changed, that community organizations doing this work were devalued, that they were no longer seen as important, which would be indicative of this drastic statistical increase overnight, essentially, from one administration to another.

I think that if any of if if this was a presidency, if this was a any other thing, you would look at the higher up, like, well, who did you bring in?

Who didn't you bring in to yield these results?

And I think that that has to be a conversation that we need to have holistically as a community if we want to see things change famously, public safety is not about statistics, it's about feelings, right?

So, what is the feeling when you have a curfew?

What is the feeling when you have an exclusionary group that's been targeted by any type of legislation or nonprofits or rhetoric that indicates that you were no longer welcome in a public space?

What's the feeling about that?

If we're not talking about the statistics, we're talking about the feeling that young black children aren't welcome in certain areas of downtown.

And then how can that be permeated?

Or how can that exist and echo in the other parts of communal gatherings throughout the city?

Can we expect to see something like that in homework?

We expect to see something like that in Squirrel Hill, Hazelwood, the Hill District.

Can this be replicated in another way if these permits like exist the way that you said this?

We could have a special event permit for 300 days.

What's to stop another organization from coalescing or co-opting that and employing that into another part of the city?

So I think that you know, succinctly it's about why have certain community organizations been excluded, either devalued, divested from, or just completely isolated and siloed, whether it's part of the nonprofit industrial complex, whatever you want to call it.

There's certain people that are specifically excluded from the table and discussions at certain times.

And one time, okay.

Two times, we got everybody's email.

Pittsburgh is small.

All black people is one person removed to Pittsburgh anywh anyway.

The third time, it's the choice.

Right.

So I think that that's really what it is, is.

Is we're we're looking at purposeful exclusion of organizations that are doing really good work.

I like the I just want to add to that.

Yeah, sure, of course.

Yeah, because I think I think it's important to pick through why organizations might feel diminished, especially because like the example that was being given about the RFPs and the paperwork, that was a decision made in the last administration.

So moving forward, why organizations feel diminished?

I think we just need to talk about like you know, more examples in terms of like why that is the case, why organizations would feel that way.

But I just wanted to like kind of just add that part of it.

I know we've yeah, if I could, um about the stop the violence.

Sure, sure.

So um we applied in the very first cycle, and then we didn't come back after that for a variety of reasons around how politicized it was um, but I think the underlying point here is that um our new mayor definitely was a council member during that time as well, and it has it has felt um as if there is a divestment from community-based organizations supporting this work.

So whether that's through the stop the violence money or whether it's through narrative, right?

Or it could be assumptive narrative.

There's something, there is a big difference.

Um, and again, we don't have a vested interest in the money.

I'm speaking from just because we are a larger organization, we can do a lot of the paperwork, and we have a lot of the systems in place to achieve the goal of acquiring the investment.

But a lot, a lot of people who are really boots on the ground, like my team is boots on the ground, I'm not boots on the ground.

Like, to be honest, my team is boots on the ground, the ones who are working at the sites.

But the boots on the ground organizations coming out of these communities that don't have this uniform structure, they just have mo they're kind of like mom and pop shops who that um that investment was super critical to them continuing the work.

And when it appears as if it's been a divestment, and again, I say this as assumptive narrative, we need to know the facts, but that I just want to kind of lay that out like that's the feeling, especially for smaller organizations who don't have like the big um 501c3 piece.

Can I build on that?

So the uh so two things.

One um aim for the impact, not a part of the the stop the violent trust either.

Um, but as uh you know funding came short, like there was many we had to cut half of the staff.

Um there was some volunteer work still happening during the week, um, as well as paid work on the weekend.

Um, I think the other thing that is important to consider as we continue to have this conversation is that it's also unrealistic to put the sole pressure of organizations that do said work to solve all of these societal problems, right?

Because there are many work that many in this space, as well as you know, that we know throughout the city that is doing that this work, and um so two things.

One, I'll go back to the point about the pandemic, um, the reset, you know, it taught us as a society a lot of things, including, you know, this idea that uh certain things absolutely had to happen a certain way.

Like you to in order to perform work, you had to go into a brick and mortar structure space.

Well, the pandemic taught us that that's not necessarily true, and those are adults, and we knew coming out of the pandemic that adults struggled.

We saw the the spike in road rage um as the pandemic opened back up, and so social decor was lost for all of us, and those that need the modeling the most, like what were those impacts on our children and how they navigate space.

So, one thing, whatever side we situate on in regards to um the rules in Market Square and however long they persist, the one thing that I will say in a short term that we can see is this collective reset that I think was important for us around emotional regulation.

Um, because when we talk about large gatherings, it's not just the Pittsburgh problem.

We know that this is nationally happening, and so when things are happening at an epidemic level like that, um it's not just isolated Pittsburgh, just like you know, gun violence in certain communities and not just the Pittsburgh-related thing.

So we have to look at the structural elements that create the right um conditions for certain behaviors to persist, and so we always have to look at root causes.

Um, the other thing is that with this very issue, we've encountered many a times where um the point was talked about like county kids that come downtown.

Another concern that I have, and many on this panel that spend time and space can concur with is that the or the the age is getting younger and younger.

And I'm not talking about masks, but it's concerning when we have you know um late elementary school and middle school kids in space when you're you have school the next day.

That's problematic, and so uh I think um our strategy has to be one that again isn't just a blanketed strategy for all youth, but what are the ones that are having specific issues and what needs certain supports and if you work with those that are on the ground, they could tell you the stories of these families and of these students and of these young people, and like you said, some are just coming for recreation, and others come because my safety is predicated on it.

Like I come down here because that older guy over there can help me find a place to stay, because being at home is not safe for me.

And so we have a cluster of why people come downtown, and it's our responsibility to understand the whys of that and then connect the resources, right?

Match the need to the resource, and versus just Blake it sweep through, we're gonna do this for all youth.

And so I think um, and if you talk to those that are doing the work, they can share the stories, and I think those connections are really really important in the conversation as we move forward.

Um, and youth, they absolutely want to be around the table, they want to help support the conversations as it relates to that.

So I just wanted to name those two things.

Please, though many have uh stabilized life post-pandemic for it, it taught us that there's a new way to do things, and many are resistant to going back to the old way.

Um, and so as adults struggle, young people struggle, um, and you know, can manipulate scenarios.

So I just think that we have to consider those things because I also see it on the education side.

I see it in K-12, you know, um, around how do we get back to whatever the new normal is, but folks are resistant now that they know that that's not an absolute way that we have to do things.

Yeah, so um if I could just jump in real quick.

I have to head out at the four o'clock.

Uh, but the Hair Foundation is committed to partnering, collaborating.

Whatever y'all need as a on the solution side of thing, just let me know and we can figure out a process.

Uh, I actually just text a few people, um, and uh, some folks who are uh open to doing a uh pop-up, like you know, they got content houses, uh, a content booth in Market Square.

If that would be helpful, I don't know.

Uh but uh folks who are on the ground, just let me know what y'all need, and we can figure it out while we can support from the Hair Foundation.

So thanks, councilman.

Sam, sorry, can we make it so this ain't my job, or I just want to say something.

Can you get out of that?

I want to recommend this population.

Before I came down here, it was 13 kids under the age of 25 that came to my job.

You keep butting me off, Barbara.

When you see me in the street, you ask me how am I doing?

We're working with this.

The homeless population comes to homework.

I'm here from 10 a.m.

to 10 p.m.

You roll your idea to stop your feet.

But this is what I will say to you.

Why are we sitting here and you act like this is not when I'm non-existence until we get in the hood until you need to run for office?

I'm there from 10 a.m.

to 10 p.m.

Homeless population.

I'm working with them every single day.

I can't even get a bus pass.

Can't get no help from you all.

And I say to Cornell, I've been in existence for 10 years.

Not one early, one nine of you all have said, hey, how can we help, Sam?

And none of you are.

So when you when you say you're talking about when Faroo Santa said that, he was dead on the money.

You all isolate the situation that are on ten toes down, two feet to the ground.

I can stand there and say they say reach it, reaches the places that they shouldn't be at.

I mean, places I shouldn't be at.

And as long as you keep up in the problem, as long as you walk in play like that, it's the reason why we have a dysfunction.

It's the reason why it's not happening.

Because you keep isolating the people who really want to do work.

You sit there and you're like, I don't understand what's going on, because you don't want to hear us.

I'm doing it every day.

Come on.

You vote.

You got voted in for that job.

I can't even tell you because it opened it up to the public.

And I want to tell you all, I'm here to help.

We deal with the homeless population.

You don't want to have to say that.

Because I get it.

When you live back where you come from, you won't have these problems.

But we had thoughts.

I have so much of last night.

We just wanted to break out somebody's glass windows.

And the boys got on the bus to ride downtown.

But we stopped it.

I'm trying to tell you, we're here to help.

We the people of 412 want to help.

We're going to stand in our corner.

We're going to act the same way you act with us.

That's all I got to say.

I got something else to do, Barbara.

Twenty-some kids to feed after school program that I even got.

After school program, that we got to feed.

I appreciate y'all.

Okay.

Um, so with that, I think um that perhaps so this is and you know, um what Sam said as well.

Um, this is clearly a recurring theme, I think.

With multiple, I know that I've heard from safe passages, they're running out of money, right?

So I I think just that question went beyond.

I was sort of looking more for a numbers, like what's you know what I mean?

But um, so you know, perhaps as the f as a follow-up, you know, with the administration just to sit down with individual leaders of the organizations to talk about the you know, the issues with with funding and you know the changing the changes in capacity and and just so that the the new administration can understand that better, right?

Um okay, so I just want to shift just to finish up, and I was I did have a question, but I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna leave it, but I I just will say whatever you can do to mobilize the um the political power of of these youth, because as people who do politics, like to to get that many people together to do one thing at the same time in such speed is pretty astonishing.

Um, so you know there's a lot of power in that uh just generally speaking, but uh I do just want to share quickly uh one sort of success story.

This is in my district, I've talked about it before.

Much smaller scale, obviously, than Market Square.

Um, I'm sure you're familiar.

So, you know, there's a bus stop in in Squirrel Hill where um they were issues, you know, just lots and lots of kids at the bus stop, right?

They had no choice to go to this bus stop after school.

Um there were incidences, and this is an ongoing, right?

So reach is there every day, the Bureau of Police is there every day.

We have had OCHS go in and um work with the employees at a Starbucks to kind of trade, you know, give them some training on dealing with the youth, and um our community groups have been there, you know, doing like cookouts, you know, once a month or so.

We've even had retirees from the community who just kind of go there every day and are just there, and the situation has gotten significantly better, significantly better, but it is ongoing, and I know that you all know this, right?

It is ongoing work, it is every day, and it takes time, and of course, you know, it takes money, and um, so you know, I just um as far as the the third spaces conversation.

I I do think sorry, I gotta leave.

Of course, my daughter's waiting for like ours.

Um, appreciate you all.

You know, as a city, we we we do provide these third spaces.

We have rec centers at our city, right?

We have rec in my district, McGee Rec Center is the gold standard, right?

Like young kids, oh older kids, right, basketball, you name it.

It is the gathering place for young people in the community, and we run it very, very well.

Our city parks department does a fantastic job.

Um, but in, you know, Hazelwood, not five minutes away, there is no such right.

In fact, we just renovated, right?

There's there that we just renovated a building, actually.

There are plenty of spaces.

There are plenty of physical spaces, right?

But we do not program in them as the city, and that is, you know, and and we rely on community groups to run around and gather money or figure, you know, figure it out themselves.

And then sometimes when they don't, because you know, groups are up and down.

It's not the government, the the funding is generally consistent, right?

But well, I mean, I mean within the government, right?

That's it, um, but um, you know, and if a group stumbles or something's not going well, you know what I mean, and they can't keep up, and so now you're you're you're relying on on and something that that can become unreliable, and that's not fair, of course, to our kids.

So I think we can do this.

I think um it's our job to do this.

I think everyone here recognizes that.

And uh anyway, so just thank you.

Thank you for all for the work you do and for being.

Thanks, Councilwoman.

I think I have to have the cue right.

It's council person Charlie, oh, councilwoman Wilson.

Councilperson Charlie, I know we still have uh councilwoman gross online as well.

So uh councilman Wilson, the floor is yours.

Mr.

Chair, I I will jump out and allow the other councilman to speak.

If uh I could just uh make a comment and say goodbye.

Sure, sure.

I think I appreciate I appreciate the time.

Um so I again want to thank all the speakers, of course, and I um have learned a lot and taking lots of notes.

I probably will have some follow-up questions after today's meeting after I process some more.

I do want to I think we'll be along the lines that several of the speakers have brought up, and including Commander Hoyson and um some of the other panelists, that this is not a homogenous group, right?

And so we've heard both the kinds of issues and solutions that we need to really not make one blanket policy, and I've got that kind of underlined many times in my notes.

There is not one blanket solution because we don't not every team has the same problems or or is looking for the same things.

I think some of the panelists have mentioned that there are many, many of our constituents who are just looking for recreation.

Whereas some of them truly have repeated trauma or under resourced or have um home issues, housing issues.

Um, and so I I look forward to having more of those in depth conversations about where we should be allocating appropriate resources, and as I always do, and I know our reach people will appreciate um that I will be consistent in my reminders to all of our discussions, that one of the things I didn't hear today, but we have had an other discussions is that I would love it also to be a gendered analysis and talk about the differences in the gendered solutions, resources, spaces, programs, um, so that we don't um assume that all of our teams um have the same needs for um but kinds of recreation or physical spaces and resources that they're looking for.

That's my two cents.

So I appreciate it.

And I I'll sign off.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilwoman.

Thank you for your patience.

Uh Councilman Wilson, and then Councilman Strandlow will close this out.

Thank you.

Uh I appreciate you putting this together, and then before I forget, I was just gonna pick you back off of something that um councilwoman gross uh was talking about.

Uh maybe it's not specifically what um she was trying to describe, but essentially whenever I would be in the uh start the violence of meetings, we would continually talk about uh funding youth pro youth football programs, which we do.

Um and uh out of that conversation, the future of that was talking about how to involve uh young girls uh teenage, you know, of all ages, and to with the with the funds as well.

So I thought that was um interesting conversation we had knocked on down.

It seemed like the first the first uh way to tackle any sort of issues was through youth football programs.

I know that we've taught together um some of the outreach uh work through those programs, or at least at least for my understanding, like football coaches and other individuals that were in that space were trained on similar ways with uh uh, you know, similar similar training that our outward workers have.

So um I'm definitely interested in that conversation because I do think that there is a gap there.

Obviously, there's a gap.

Not you know, I'm not seeing, not seeing girls play football that often.

So um but to get back to this this conversation uh around this table, appreciate all you coming today.

I I did have uh conversation recently with the PDP that I thought was in uh insightful for me to understand about funding around uh these this uh this conversation which I think in the future be useful uh to include in the conversation which is um and maybe some maybe someone here is is funded by the county but the county uh because I know that they like they are probably um probably receive all the funding for just like just like homelessness they're the they're the entity that does receive all that funding and because we're the city of Pittsburgh we always are the face of every community meeting every every issue that comes about we're like you know I don't know how long ago it was it was like six years ago we're like you know uh you know councilman um council president and then uh at the time um uh your predecessor was talking about this fund and we went uh forward and and put together the stop the violence fund and out of that came continued funding for outreach continued funding for uh the different programs that we continue to talk about here at the table but we cannot you know continue to have this conversation without really having a good um understanding of what the county uh how the county is um is uh spending uh dollars uh to really understand flash crowd disturbances or you know what's behind that happening so um I'm pretty sure you're all forgot that I said I had a conversation with the PDP because I'm just rambling on but uh the reason why I think there's a connection there uh because they said that they're gonna get some funding from the county to hire a consultant everyone here knows that already apparently probably they have to hire a consultant to understand more about uh you know what their direction should be in that in that market square space which anyway led me down the path to under trying to remind myself how much funding the county gets to really solve these issues so looking forward to you know um any sort of collaboration you know any sort of future conversations we could have directly with the county to understand this but uh I thought it was very very um you know impactful to to hear what's what what's happening uh from your from your end and um you know especially just to you know understand where our outreach team is coming from because I know that you know Cornell is left but in the past uh I've worked directly with Cornell uh and the outreach team on several several uh you know average workers from the north side um so you know I are you're you're mostly downtown and in uh zone five I'll five but one of the supervisors we downtown is kind of like all of us kind of touch downtown okay we all send workers from our sides to work downtown okay we just extended our hours from two to ten now it'd be good to connect with every zone is down there so yeah it'd be great to connect with you on you know the work that you're doing but um you know previously just like talking with the average workers that are specifically before my district grew I was always talking specifically to our reach workers on the north side and um I always uh you know wanted to make sure that um never dismissive of what you know the opinions were of the average workers um you know about my neighborhoods and how they could you know violence could be solved so I told Cornell a long time ago I said well I have this I have this uh power that was given to me that people pick up when I call so if you can't get somewhere you know please let me know so I can call that person.

It sounds ridiculous to say like we're some you know but it is a unique power you have when you get elected somehow everyone picks up.

So no doubt.

You need to get in touch with someone?

You need to get in touch with someone.

So to push that conversation, do you need to push that?

What I'm saying is to push that conversation, or in this instance that I'm talking about, you know, it was a juvenile situation and and uh um you know it doesn't matter to go into the detail, but I'm always interested to have these conversations to try and push the conversation to someone who may not really understand the severity of the situation.

So it's pretty vague what I'm talking about, but I got you.

I think that it's it's important that uh council members continually have connection with the with the outreach workers.

Um so I always appreciate uh you coming to the table.

And with that, I'm just looking forward to uh continuing to connect with people at this table, and thank you, councilman, for putting us together.

Thank you.

And uh to say a bad joke that's usually between us.

But uh I think one of the reasons why they pick up the phones because your dick name is Bobby with the tool.

And he didn't even know what that means in like a few months.

And it's a little inside joke between me and the councilman.

So uh to close this out is uh Councilman Sharl.

Uh yes, uh thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I will be relatively short because we were losing experts here and uh I know it's been a long afternoon, but I do appreciate the discussion here.

Um I have a couple things and they're not necessarily like related to each other, but I do want to acknowledge that we do have a curfew on our books.

Our curve we have curfew has been uh on the book since 1995, it's chapter 604.

Uh when I was seven years old.

Um we obviously don't enforce it, and I think you know, I I think one of the big things in this discussion, I represent Southside, so we've got a lot of discussions about what to do with youth in late at night.

It's it's the practicality of it.

You know, it's where do you where do you take you know, where do you take the kids?

What if the parents don't show up?

It's it's you're taking an officer away because they have to you know babysit, and it's just it I I get asked almost almost like every week, every time something happens in Southside, they're like, why don't you do a curfew?

Why don't you do a curfew?

It's like it, you know, you you can't.

That's that's the answer.

You can't.

Like, and yeah, I mean, and and you go ahead.

If you if you've got something to add, no, dude, you say my sentiments, what I was saying earlier.

Like, it's we can't do this.

Like it I I I truly don't know how other cities pull it off, but it's like, you know, it just it it is not possible.

So it's you know, it it is not something that we have, it's not something like leadership, and it feels like I have to whenever I've got folks in in Southside who wanna like help work on problems, I have to like almost give the same like lecture at the start.

Like, we're not doing a curfew, so let's move on to the next thing.

Let's move on to whatever the next option is, because that we that is that is not feasible here.

You know, we can argue whether it's a good idea or a bad idea, and that I'm I'm not even that's a totally different idea.

We just can't do it.

Like, it can't be done.

Um but it but again, it is on the books and has been on the books since I was seven years old.

Um the other thing I I if I can shift gears completely, like I said, some of these things are not really related to each other.

Uh, want to highlight something that I think is I wish the school district was doing a better job highlighting this.

Uh I represent Arlington K through eight.

Um it's uh, you know, uh K through eight school and it's named Arlington, it's actually in Mount Oliver.

Um, but the school district at this point last year, or that school had a hundred and ten fights at this point in the year last year.

This year they've had seven.

Um, I don't know.

I don't know what to do with that fact, just other than it's awesome, and I think we should celebrate it more.

Um we talk a lot about issues with the school district, and I don't think that we celebrate their success enough.

I want to make sure that to speak that out into the into the ether there.

Um but then the the question I want to want to kind of end with, and I'm I'm curious, I really want to get your perspective on this.

Um I go to a conference almost every year with uh Professor David Kennedy, who is you know, kind of a renowned criminal justice uh expert.

And one of the like the big David Kennedy thesis is that most of the problem, most of the crime is committed by a very, very small popular segment of the population.

Like you can have a huge crowd, but it's like one or two people in that crowd that that cause the problem.

And his his kind of concept, and he's got lots of great anecdotes of times that he's done this in other places.

But how do you how do you figure out what to do with that that little population there?

So that the whole population isn't roped in with it?

How do you how do you handle that?

Um I'm not an expert in this world at all.

I just I know that a lot of other people look at that and they think that that is there's there's some truth to that.

My concern is always that we talk a lot about programming and like what we can do for the kids.

And and you know, I represent Southside, we don't really have a large uh, you know, kid population or youth population that that comes down in the evening or that that is from the south side, the youth population that comes down is usually from elsewhere, and they're coming down to the south side.

So some of the questions we've talked about is like what are the things that we could do that you know, they like let's not you know, let's not criminalize the kids.

How do let's create a better opportunity for them if they're coming down to the south side?

But I have no idea what that could possibly look like.

Because if we you know, if we do like basketball, let's say like we did late night basketball, you know, the people that would go to late night basketball, they're not the they're not the that little population, they're the large crowd, like that we do youth sports, you know, um, very close with with Vaughn Matt and you know, kids in the Southside Bears, they're not the kids that are that are causing the problems.

Those are the you know, they already know Coach Vaughn at that point.

So how do they, you know, how do we find the the kids that like would not be interested in the you know any Lord, there's anything I suggest would be like super corny at this point, but like how do we get the activity that gets that kid interested in coming in?

You know, I I don't begin to know what that is, but what what do you guys how would you approach this problem or what would you think that would would be?

Yeah.

So I mean I'll start and then open up to the group because I know folks have uh insight.

Um number one, Principal Caldwell's doing amazing work at Arlington.

She is and a big reason why so when we think about the safety triangle, starting, you know, not just physical safety, but psychological safety as well as emotional regulation.

Like she chose to intentionally focus on what are the causes of violence or fights or disputes.

Um and another powerful thing about that work is that it's translating to uh results academically.

So when safety happens, you know, safety and wellness is the conversation that we need to have.

Um, and if I if I may uh one thing I forgot to mention, she told me uh so a hundred and seven fights, if a fight has two people in it, for each person that's in a fight, that's eight hours of staff time that are spent on you know, after calling parents, whatever needs to be done.

Now with all that, you know, the all the additional staff hours that that have been created by not having those fights, now you're able to pour more into the kids.

And I was like, so it's powerful.

Well, I think it's a model.

And I think many of the organizations operate off of the similar preference premise, you know, of collaboration with uh the youth, the you know the the person that's having the issue, what are the reasons for the issue?

Um who they do huddles every morning where they walk and talk and build with teachers, with other caregivers in the space, parents as well, uh, and the and the young people.

So I I think we should do a much better job as a city, like uh growing up as a lifelong Pittsburgh.

I don't know a time when the school district and the city of Pittsburgh, um, the relationship was stronger.

And I just think that we need to continue to build on ways that we can be champions for the stories that need to be told, as well as honest around where gaps and leaks are in our process.

And so um uh councilman gross brought up a point around you know, Kimberly Crenshaw's work with intersectionality, so she talked about you know a race based history or a gender, uh, another issue around sexual orientation, right?

Because our youth are not, it's not a blanket thing.

So based upon what is my trigger, um, what is my identity?

Where am I firm in my identity?

Where am I struggling with in my identity?

And then um how does inequity happen when there's uh march multiple marginalization points based upon gender, ethnicity, race, so on and so forth.

And so you asked the point on what we can do with the youth, and I think um, like you said, you have ones that aren't interested in football, and so to those, we continue to gear them that way.

Um we have many young ladies, uh young people that um want to figure out how they can start a business, earn money, um, you know, so cosmetology, like how are we exposing uh opportunities for to connection because plenty and many of the young ladies in our spaces are already doing hair, nails, doing things on their own.

How do we create um connections to where they can uh get into a business of like taking care of themselves now?

And then how can they connect to other career opportunities?

So I think what we as a collective um bringing youth representation and planning along, tell letting them tell us what they love about what we're talking about, where we're all the way off with, um, what other opportunities for exposure they would be looking for.

And then sometimes I was just having a conversation with the principal from Breshir and around career exploration for one of her students, and she was talking about the game commission and this interest in fishing that this young man has.

Um like, and she was just saying how uh that um she was saying that prior to that moment, you know, as he be these are things that he wouldn't necessarily been thinking about on his own, but these connections that they were able to make in school around exposure.

So I think sometimes youth can tell us what they need, and sometimes they don't even know yet, and they need to try things out.

And so I think um we're there's multiple answers to the same question, and we should have a plethora of opportunities that can be engaged in from athletics to academics, um, because another thing is like uh it's uh it's further upstream, but there's a correlation between literacy and violence prevention, and so how do we, you know, um celebrate um scholar identity amongst young people and the pressure to to hide effort, like we did some research in the district where we looked at um the between third and fifth grade boys, um black and brown boys specifically, but they were hiding effort in the classroom not because they didn't know the answers, but but it wasn't cool to display it in space.

And so I think that we have to have a plethora of answers that support all the identities.

Safe Passage does great around building identities um within young people.

And so I just think where are the identities that young people and communities are already aware of, and then where are ones that they're not even thinking about that we can create connection, and there are so many resources around the table and within the city, um, that I just think how do we how do we build bridges, you know, better bridges in the city of Bridges for connection and opportunity.

So where things work, cool and where we haven't explored yet, like let's consider those things too.

And for uh I'll get to you in just a second here, but uh, you know, I I think my question though is that do we is your I guess thesis here that if we create as many different opportunities that eventually we will find you know because my my problem is like how do we how do we get that two percent of the population?

And you're saying like we just need to create a hundred different things.

But for the two percent of the population, we need to spend extensive time, and you don't even have to do it because we've already done it.

There's many around the table that have sometimes we might need to, but I think for the the smaller part, we need to have very specific um and intentional strategies that tie to what that 2% is dealing with because we know hurting people hurt people, right?

And so where are the trauma points?

You know, what therapeutic elements need to happen, what um OVR opportunities for connection to work-related stuff.

So I think with that 2%, the conversation can be the same, but it can also be different.

But where are people's interest if we do interest assessment and uh and things that they're good at, and then how can they make career connections to those things, and not even career connections because some of that stuff is too far down the line.

How can I make connections to things that I can do now?

And oftentimes when you talk about that 2%, there's a larger level of vulnerability with that population.

So how do we meet those needs and moment?

Um I know uh is it to improve that the city built um has started for over on the the south side, and one of the things I like about that work is it's a holistic work that works with the whole family, not just the the um the young person is working with the parents, is working with other people in the household, because Cornell brought that up earlier too, is like you could do a great work, but a child has to return home somewhere.

And we have to, you know, how are we helping to stabilize and understand the needs of that household?

So I would just we just I think we need to uh to do a better job of understanding what that 2% population is dealing with and let our strategies match those things, including um accountability, you know, a consequence, which was brought up.

Um the last thing I'll say is that one of the things that I've noticed in space, and so uh there's another challenge that we have not only in our K-12 education environment within society as a whole.

So, you know, when we know IEPs or individual learning plans, like there's certain advocacy and protection for young people, rightfully so, and educational spaces.

But one of the unintended consequences that we're starting to see now are like young people saying, well, you know, I can you can only hold me so accountable, or you know, if I I can do this thing and I might not get uh a punishment or uh a reprimand because you have only so many things allotted that you can discipline, and so on one hand we need advocacy and they need protection, but another unintentional consequences in society, you operate in a world that doesn't uh is not concerned about IEP.

And I'm not suggesting that all of our issues are with that population, but when we have young people that are dealing with issues around uh emotional instability and some of those academic pieces that it's a crash course collision, and when you look at downtown, if you were to at one time, I'm not saying this that right now, but there were many kids that I knew that were dealing with those complexities, and I think we have to bring those experts in as we talk about mapping and supporting those populations.

Um yeah, so I'm gonna speak anecdotally about this and tie this into a local situation.

Um I grew up, I spent my formative years in New York, right in Queens, and one of the things that was dope for us growing up was like all the people we looked up to on the TV with record deals, even before I got my record deal, was in the neighborhood, right?

Like my deep wasn't far from me.

Um Nas wasn't far from me.

A lot of those guys I actually went to high school with um some guys in G Unit.

They weren't far from me.

Um so having access to this people, and I'm not suggesting that you know Pittsburgh sits here and cuts a check to, you know, every single celebrity that comes out of this area.

But I'll tie this into this, and I just looked over my shoulder a little bit ago, see he's behind me.

I didn't know he's gonna say I know he's here.

So Bo Boaz is one of my favorite entertainers ever in my life.

And Bo being one of the most gifted Pittsburgh products in terms of hip hop ever, being in the spaces he's in now is exactly what you need.

Um when I first moved to Pittsburgh, the first rapper I learned about um outside of Jaseri was Bo.

And I'm not just saying this is my brother and I'm a fan, but the the things that he has said in in his music and the in the environment that he comes from to him to be in the environments now giving back and and working with the young people that were just like us growing up because I think we're the same age, bro.

I think we're the same age.

Um that is where that 2% population, wherever that small infinitesimal population looks to, is the problems that came off road.

Um again, anecdotally, I was 17.

Um I was arrested for attempted murder, spent a good bit of my time in jail, and then I was able to, as soon as I got out of jail, I went on tour with union, right?

I went on tour with the guys I looked up to because it was in my community.

I was accessible to them and they were accessible to me.

Having a treasure like Bo behind us, and in the reach program, people know him.

People know he's an OG now, he made it out.

Like, you know, people can sit here and they say, How did you do this?

How did you get to have wing night at your restaurant and all them other things?

Yeah, I still gotta pull up.

But like how like how can you still have proximity to our community, but we see you with celebrities on TV and all these other things.

They're that's an invaluable resource.

Um, and I think like, you know, we've engaged the Mar Hamlin, we've engaged a lot of these other, like, you know, high level A-list people who are in the city that come back all the time.

You know, how many people were just here for the draft that actually from Pittsburgh that weren't tapped to do outreach work?

I feel like that's that's a massive drop.

That's a fumble right there.

Like that you have all these professional athletes, all these entertainers, all these people here, these the laundry list of CMU graduates, the Point Park graduates, you know, um everybody loves to go on piss uh TV and say I'm from Pittsburgh, right?

Who has a direct line to these people to say, hey, come through and talk to, or just appear with some of these young people?

And that that that, I mean, it worked for me, you know, and and I'm I'm exactly who we talk about here.

You know what I mean?

I'm exactly who we talk about.

My first time I got arrested was 11.

So when you were talking about these youngers downstairs, uh downtown, that was me.

You know what I mean?

Um, so I think really and truly, like it's just like this 2% population, we all tend to look at them as like these sociopaths, right?

It's not that.

Like, you know, it's really and truly not that.

It's just that they don't really feel like they're connected to anybody that's older than them that gives a damn.

You know what I mean?

Like that that really cares about their investment.

This isn't a critique of anybody.

I'm just saying, like, you know, like my biggest problem every time that I had an issue as a young person wasn't with people my age.

It really wasn't.

It was with people substantially older than me.

Um, and then conversely, the people that made me want to do better were people older than me.

You know, they they taught me because you you think about it, that 2% of that small, that small group, right?

They're the most influential ones of their friends.

You know what I mean?

Like, for better or for worse, I learned that violence made me popular.

So I got really good at it.

I got good at survival violence, I got good at inactive violence.

It landed me in a couple whack situations, but then, you know, it it also put me where I am today learning how to deal with it and respond to it.

So I, you know, specifically, you know, I'm telling this back that if we had investment programs or just investment strategies, I'm not talking that everybody has to be, you know, tap, go holler whiz, go holler at fed, right?

Um, or or holler at Jeff Goldblum, right?

We we know that's that's a stretch.

You got Bo right there.

Bo does great work.

You you have so many of these other brothers and and and people just in the community that are legends in the neighborhood and the areas that are untapped for one reason or another.

Um I think those if you have conversations with those people that belong to your district or wherever they are, levy those.

Because those are the ones that pay off the dividends, you know what I mean?

Um I at least in my experience, again, this is all anecdotal.

You know what I mean?

Take what you want from it, but it worked for me, you know, um, when I would go when I would go uptown and bus arounds would be out 20, 50 dollars for school clothes, right?

We go outside and we would see Cam, you know, hitting a wheelie down 125th Street, and he'd be like, yo, Shorty stay in school.

You know what I mean?

Like, just something like that, like just that impactful.

You know what I'm saying?

Seeing like Queens Day, what what when we would have, like, you know, what would be a Bayesi Punk or anything like that, 50 LL Cool J, a lot of these guys would come out and they'd be like, yo, like, yeah, I know I'm rapper about X, Y, and Z, and I'm saying only different things, but yo, listen to your teachers, right?

Just something like, even though you sound cliche, that's gonna be way more impactful than, and again, I was an educator.

I went from the music industry to education, right?

You your average student really don't care about what they teachers say.

But if someone like off the roads or someone that's like super impactful, they give you the same message.

Unfortunately, it hit different.

That's just the reality of it.

So, I mean, again, anecdotally, that's how we that's how we approach it.

Um, I can't say everybody has the same privilege and resources that we do, but there's a there's a lot of Pittsburgh legends outside of the hip hop scene in Pittsburgh that would love to be able to do this work just given the opportunity.

Can I say something real quick?

Um, just really quickly, thinking about what you're asking specifically about diversion strategies, right?

Um, so one thing I'll say that is missing is maybe some of the diversion experts, um, as you think about how to grow this conversation.

Um, but when you look at diversion data, like the results of diversion, um, most people, most young people don't feel that the consequence is worse than their circumstance.

And so when you have when you really drill into that, and you think about this two percent, that is their mindset.

The consequence is it may not be the best, but I'm sheltered.

I have some food, I have some friends, so the consequence of uh, you know, a crime, so to speak, is not um worse than their circumstance, which is constantly fighting to survive, constantly fighting to be connected to something.

So I think it's about thinking about the mindset and from the mindset, we can then think about some deeper solutions.

All of us are doing all of this work.

A lot of us, I know personally I've said like I cannot, I don't know what I would do with a young person who who has been consistently re-traumatized, right?

Because I'm not a therapist, you know, I'm not a behavioral specialist.

I don't know.

But I do know that them knowing, like for our for us, them knowing that there's a safe space to go to if they need, if they need is critical, but it's not the only answer.

And I think looking at diversion and what that root causes, you know, whether it's homelessness, whether something, but that would be my response.

Thanks.

If I could just jump in really quickly to the two percent, I think there's some diversity.

So a percentage is gonna be what we just heard the personal anecdote experience.

I'm sure there's data that shows that.

But then there are the young people who are emotionally and physically unsafe.

They may not be looking for the popularity because they are clowning around, taking risks, but they are emotionally and physically unsafe.

And sometimes it's in the schools.

They're emotionally and physically unsafe, and they spend most of their time in school, and then they may also be emotionally and physically unsafe at home.

Many times those young people in that percentage, some places is five percent, they're looking for an adult who is going to listen, look and see them, not just as a problem, not just as a nuisance, but that takes a level of patience, maturity, and stay around.

Um I'm in schools right now, and I just got cussed out last week, but I came back on Monday, right?

I was just there yesterday, right?

So this idea that you know they're waiting to see, and sometimes it's they need something right away, they need the relief, they need the food, they need the shelter, they need the whatever, and that's the space where they are.

So I think we don't want to lose sight of I hear diversion absolutely.

We don't want to hear lose sight of people um being trained to work with those young people because working with children with multi-level trauma is traumatic.

It's traumatic.

You gotta be able to deal with that.

But I think we also have to level up and understand and appreciate that there may not be food at home, there may not be lights at home, the parent may be working, you know.

As I said earlier, there's some parents they can't take off.

You know, they can't take off and come and listen to this because they're gonna get doc pay, or they may not keep that little job or job that they have, it could be a big job.

But my point is that yes, there are some young people, but we've got to find out who that two person is, right?

So when we did, they did something, they were having a lot of suicide when I was at Virginia in Loudoun County, they were having lots of suicides among adolescents.

That's a high per capita, that's Northern Virginia.

They were having all kinds of suicides.

So they did do a needs assessment.

Well, they attempted to and figure out like what do the kids want, what do the kids need, and what are the programs.

So I think the additional thing to consider is is there a database or system, which you know, a lot of um counties and government don't necessarily have that helps you to see all of these organizations and where you could make those connections, right?

That that means paying for someone to do that work, that data and analysis to say, okay, yes, we do have these school based, we do have these community-based, we do have mom and pop, we do have larger organizations, so that as you're identifying that two percent or that 10 or 15%, you can see who's gonna partner with the commander, who's gonna partner with the outreach team because oftentimes they're there's silo databases that are not that can are there and possibly can meet the need, but they're not talking to each other unless they're at the table together, right?

So you have these folks who are at the table together.

So I think it's one finding out those young people need, and it may not be the traditional survey that's nice and clean, it might be right there in the street, and getting cussed out before you get to the root of it, and that's real, and that's very real.

So you just have to be prepared and have those people who are willing to say, we gotta find out what that 2% needs, and we also need to make sure we're we're we're attending to the social emotional health of those young people as well as the adults who are serving them because they're gonna need support too.

I just wanted to add that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I just I won't be brief.

I just think that for that 2%, we don't we don't think about how capitalism has affected the 2%.

I won't talk about that a lot.

And it is a capitalistic mind state that these young people have that tells them that they need to be rich at 22.

They need that, but the struggling college student mentality of I don't have any money, I gotta send home for noodles.

Now take that away from college and put that on the streets to after you graduate from high school at 18, and no one you didn't take school enough serious yourself, and there's really no pressure on you to do anything after that.

You're stuck in this little limbo phase of what do I do next?

And what every young person I talk to, the first thing they say is, I want some money.

How can I get some money?

What can I do to get some money?

And going down that path of what can I do to get some money leads to all of the bad decisions and leads them to places that they didn't intend on going.

So from and tying it together with like a Boaz and guys of that nature, that 2%, like Boaz was intentional for being a part of our team.

Like we always say with Reach, we don't have job applications.

We are selecting people who come from the same life that we have that change their mindset and have and started doing the things in the community already before we bring you in and ask you to be a part of what we have going on with Reach.

If it wasn't for programs like uh a reach S program in those days, then I wouldn't be doing this balance prevention work because it took somebody to pull me in and get me together and say, I'm gonna teach you this work, I'm gonna get you these trainings, I'm gonna get you together and get you on a track to earn a living off of giving back to your community.

And that is an aspect that, like, so you know, crime in America and in this world isn't that we want it to go away, uh, wishful thinking, but we know that it's not going to go away.

And you're gonna need people to Cynthia's point about young getting younger in the workforce.

You're gonna need people to fill these slots and come in.

Boaz is younger than me from a young another generation.

So him coming in this spot is already putting younger people in place that come from that 2% to get these jobs.

I um intentionally hire people like uh have guys that I've a coaching uh football that I know what their young lives were, and before they were able to get off track and totally make those bad decisions, pull them in to doing violence prevention work and getting them trainings and building them up so they can eventually replace me as I elevate on to the next place.

And the key thing to pulling them in was the capitalistic mindset.

Hey, I got some money.

And I'm gonna pull y'all in.

Y'all want some money?

Yeah, I got some money.

Well, I'll go to any training you want me to go to if you're giving me two hundred dollars a day.

You know what I mean?

Like they so they were, yeah.

So they wanted to come and they want to be a part of it.

So that 2%, their mindset is already on trying to survive and what they need and how they can get them get the resources to survive.

So pulling them in and getting them under the fold and helping them change their mindset to getting it is the way.

That's how that's our approach to reach, and we're actively doing it now.

Several of our workers were in that 2% that we've changed and got them doing God's work now and helping change other people.

So it's just getting that system and getting it rolling with getting those people indoors and not shutting them out completely because they made a mistake or two.

People always forget the mistake.

We I was we made my friends laugh about this.

They say, Well, you guys were bad back in the day, and you changed your life.

People don't forget that we want the prison to change our life.

That's it listen.

In the streets, you either got uh robbed or something, or you went to jail, or you got shot or strike.

Something traumatic happened for you to change your life.

I didn't just graduate high school and say, Oh no, I'm a good person now, I'm a citizen.

I was doing knucklehead stuff then and continue doing it into my younger 20s until something traumatic happened.

I went away, changed my whole life, came back, and now you're a different person.

We're trying to stop kids from going through that process.

Right now, you don't need to have a traumatic experience in order for you to move on to the next level of life.

No, you're in the two percent, pull you in now, get you together, and so you don't have to go through that traumatic experience to get here.

So that's how I think we could approach it.

Can I just do it up there real quick before we cut out?

No, no, no.

You just cooking.

Like, no, no, no.

Um, we don't have a lot of money, but our program that you've come to, uh, Council Professor Charlotte, um, we're fun about a state, right?

And uh we pay all the youths a hundred dollars a day for pulling up.

Now, when I get younger, is this off the roads?

I'm like, yo, I like it like this.

You ever have you even make something for yourself in the kitchen and it don't taste like your mom make it, and it'd be the same ingredients because your mom put love in there, right?

I know $100 a day ain't that much.

But when I break it down to these youths, I'm like, yo, look, you hustling, you know how to break this down, you know what your split is, you know what your lawyers are gonna cost, you know how much this is gonna cost.

This hundred dollars a day is actually making you more money because it's more consistent and when you're getting on the roads.

So if you you want to come rock with me, I can guarantee you $100, I can guarantee you food, I can get into you a safe space, and I can get into you a conversation and perhaps like a field trip, some other place where you ain't never been before.

And it's just like this is the type of conversation we have under that capitalistic mindset because you know, capitalism, right?

We here.

So, you know, I f the way I look at it is like if we're gonna be getting money off these youths with these with these grants, they should be being paid for it.

You know what I mean?

They should be the they should be the recipients and the beneficiaries of all these programs.

So that's just kind of how I leverage it to like to my youngers.

It's like, yo, listen.

I know it ain't much, but it's all that I got.

I actually wish I could give you more.

And when I can, you know what I mean.

I'm like, yo, here's double what we gave you last week.

You know what I mean?

So it's just like just small things like that.

This is like when you leave with love, is again as cliche as it sounds, it does go a long way specifically with that population that you're talking about, where they feel like don't nobody care about that.

You know what I mean?

Good.

All right.

Uh uh.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr.

K.

Thank you, Councilperson.

Um, you know, we're a little bit past hour three.

Um, so I don't have any questions.

Uh I really enjoy the c the conversation, the the insight, look forward to continuing this and and not making this a one-off, and also, you know, uh, ensuring that that uh as part of the work that we do that we create some spaces for our young people to be at these tables and be at these conversations and hear directly from them and and have them design how that conversation goes.

Um, it's part of the work that we're gonna do in the weeks and months to come, um, you know, to continue to figure out, you know, how do we solve this issue, you know, and get out of it ahead of it, you know, and and really, you know, serve our young people um, you know, the best way we can, because I think that's like the important thing.

Like when we were on our last call, you know, about the street team and and and planning our our June 27th kickoff event at Liberty Green Park, talking about how do we show, you know, ultimately when we get past, you know, the the accountability stuff, which we know is important and the rules and stuff we know is important, but also they're showing how we can um, you know, um, you know, in in in a in in a real meaningful way, wrap our arms around these young people and show that somebody cares about them.

Um so I I want to thank uh everyone for being here today.

I know there's a lot more conversation that we could have today.

I know there's gonna be a lot more conversation into the future.

I just look forward to working with you.

I think this could be, you know, uh the beginning of something really transformational for the city, taking something that caused a lot of anxiety and fear and pain and a lot of emotion over the last month or so is something that we maybe, you know, um sometime in the near future, you know, we could see is actually was um like like you said, you know, that uh that that traumatic experience that actually led to growth, you know, development and hopefully a celebratory moment one day.

Um so um having exhausted the business of this post-agenda, this meeting is now adjourned.

Including, I wrote a list because there's a lot of them, but including the terminal building on the south side, to which we refurbished uh the existing buildings into new commercial space and created a plaza, um an outdoor public plaza with it.

We have worked on the Garden Theater.

We've worked on currently the Wellington and the Pennsylvania or two historic um residential multifamily buildings that are uh just being finished.

We worked on I've worked on Rockwell Park uh in Point Breeze for over five years, both on master planning architecture interiors and how to um insert new new purpose into historic buildings.

Uh, some of the other ones we're working on are have been Masonic Hall and Knights of Malta, the brass building, which houses our uh own office, in fact, it used to be an old brash manufacturing business in the Strip district, and we repurposed it for residential and commercial, and I think it's a very personal project, but you know, a good example of how our office and my personal approach to historic conservation when it comes to architecture is which is infuse the purposeful life of historic buildings for the future without compromising, of course, the architectural integrity and of the building and the uh community and the city as a whole.

Um, currently we're working on doing the same thing to the Gulf Tower uh close by here in downtown, which will be a mixed-use project.

So really our um in my work with Indovina, I go through a lot of these processes from the design perspective, and I am hoping to bring that experience to the commission and and really um help, yeah, provide some insight to how we can best use and guide uh any applicants or any projects towards the best possible use of historic buildings.

It's not just a museum, they shouldn't necessarily just be the way they were, but it's a matter of being respectful uh to the regional architectural intent and uh also providing opportunities for new use.

So I'm very excited for this hopeful opportunity, and I thank you very much for your attention.

And likewise, if there's any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

My name is Margie Isler.

I'm a 43-year resident of Squirrel Hill, uh not a native of Pittsburgh, but I'm going to die here with my boots on, as I say to my friends.

So I hope it's not any time soon, but I certainly love this city.

I'm currently the secretary of the Board of Trustees for the Community College of Allegheny County.

We've been involved in an in bringing to life a number of historic buildings for the college and to repurpose for college use, and we have tried in every instance to maintain the integrity of the building, the woodwork, not trying to destroy anything that would be of historic significance.

And I think to date we've done a really good job, the latest one being Shelfant Hall that we just opened recently.

Uh supporter of city trees.

I was chair of the Shade Tree Commission for 15 years.

I was a founding member of Tree Pittsburgh, uh founding board member.

I'm involved in a number of uh city projects with my role as president and past president of the Squirrel Hill Urban Coalition, where I've been actively trying to bring some order to Forbes and Murray in terms of having enough benches for bus stops and trees for shade and things that will help the neighborhood maintain its uh unique urban uh status.

I've also recently been and still am vice president and fundraising chair for the Neal Log House.

Uh, if you don't know where that is, it's in Shenley Park.

It's a circa 1795 house that was falling down.

It was rescued by us incorporating in 2021 as the Friends of the Neal Log House.

We began fundraising in 2022 after knowing all of what we needed to do to actually restore the house to historic preservation standards.

And over the course of a year and a half, we raised over $300,000.

We did manage to restore it.

We have a contractor from Holidaysburg, Pennsylvania, who is an expert with log houses, and he was brought in to actually do the work.

We also have restored and gone to great lengths to furnish the Neal Log House with some items that have been left over from the junior league purchase in the 1970s, but many had to be destroyed because during the process of the house being closed for 30 years, lots of critters came in.

You might have seen Fox in there in the newspaper and squirrels, and we had a groundhog that took us three years to get him a home 17 miles from here.

And we have been struggling to maintain the landscaping, and we have plans to build a Virginia fence, and then our plans are to turn it over to a permanent leasey, a nonprofit that can run it for future generations, and we look forward to doing that.

I'm very honored to be uh considered for this appointment, and I hope that I will be able to answer any of your questions, and I thank you.

Very much.

We'll now turn over to members with questions for the record at direct reflect.

We've also been joined by our additional colleague, Councilman Strassberger.

Thank you, Mr.

President, Mr.

Chair.

Uh thank you all for being here, and for um, you know, clearly you're all incredibly qualified for this role.

I appreciate your willingness to serve.

And I really just have one question, um, because I know this is something that the commission grapples with, and that is: how do you think about historic relevance and historic the need for historic preservation when it's a decision that you know is maybe how do you grapple with the decision uh to preserve based on the significance of the architecture itself versus the events that occurred inside the building?

Um, we've seen those, we've seen varying types of nominations come through that um, you know, where the where we know that there might be a less significant case for the architecture itself, but there have been significant historical events taking place inside, um, and obviously cases that are you know where the where the structure itself is historically relevant, might not be popular architecture for all types because preference you know is it's all subjective, it's all based on preference, but it's ignor historically significant.

How do you think about historical relevance and structure relevance?

And I encourage you, this is for everybody to answer or anyone who wants to answer, just to say like I encourage disagreement.

If you do disagree with one another, that's okay with me.

So whoever starts doesn't have to be the vanguard of the answer.

Anyone is able to start.

I'll start.

Um I believe in balanced perspective.

I also believe in trusting the perspective and the opinion of the staff that would advise the commission based on the guidelines that are in place, and so speaking specifically to balanced perspective, if we're permitted by the guidelines to take into consideration what happened inside of the building, then I would absolutely do that.

If the guidelines require us not to take that into consideration, then I would follow the guidelines and the recommendation of staff.

I agree with Chase, what he just said, and I would take that one step further.

I did spend a lot of my career in the field of regulatory administration, and I think writing the requirements and the regulations and the code in language that can be understood and can be applied equitably and can be applied reasonably by the people who are on the commission is key to us moving forward with answering your question.

But I also believe sometimes there are ways to honor what happened inside a building in ways that don't require the building itself to be considered as the final answer.

I think the balance is what Chase started with, and I agree that that's the way to approach it.

Um as someone who's in the business of um preserving histories and culture, I think that a place can absolutely be very important to the happenings that are there.

I think really listening to the community too and what they would want and how their relationship with that building, what it's like, of course, like what's safe and keeping up with the codes, etc.

But I really see being part of this commission is this partnership too with the community and what listening to them and kind of um coming forward to being informed by them and vice versa, and how we can work together in a partnership.

But I do feel like it has to be case by case too, but a place can absolutely inform a history.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's that's why as an architectural practitioner, I think this is such an interesting group and commission to be part of because to me, historic preservation is such a wide range of things, and it is exactly what you described.

It can be a place, it can be a building, it can be uh something, an event that happened that we collectively decide has significant enough significance that it should be honored in the future use of the building, and when we think about historic buildings, maybe most people think of you know law cabins or uh older buildings, but really we're also going into an era of saying what is architectual significance or building significance that's worth preserving, it could be the Hertz often neuron uh parking garage, even though it's not really, I mean, it's it's a range, and I think they're so uh I would love to contribute in a way to advise on what is the best use of it, and how do we preserve architectural excellence and and cultural excellence as well?

But so I don't know if it's really an answer per se, but I think I very much agree with you that it is a sliding scale, and it's a very um big responsibility to make those decisions both on behalf of the people that come to us and come to you and want to do something else with the building, and uh to guard the ones that made it in the first place.

And I think that the best uh the best path forward is to always ensure that whatever is changed is an added value.

It's never a deduction, and doing that with high quality design construction, whatever it might be programming is is important in my opinion.

But thank you for the thank you for your thoughtful answers, and I'll let my colleagues um ask whatever questions they have.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Councilman Shorlin.

Uh yes, thank you.

Thank you for your willingness to serve here.

Um I will be relatively brief here.

Um, but I do want to talk about uh one of the the you I think a couple people have mentioned the balance of uh historic preservation, and something that we have uh experienced here at a council and in our our city is the weaponizing of the historic review commission.

Oh my.

Wow.

Yeah.

Everyone's getting it.

Well that was an experience I never had.

Just for the viewing public.

We all just receive a tornado warning on our phone.

So that's what we're talking about.

Is that what it was?

Yeah.

Oh my goodness.

A tornado.

That was how tough this question was.

How about losing your train of thought there?

Um, so I I wanted to ask about the, you know, uh historic review commission being used, you know, as a a last effort to kill a project that a community doesn't support.

Oh, sure.

Sorry.

Okay.

Uh, using the Historic Review Commission as a last ditch effort to kill a project that that you know that someone has an opposition to, uh, and we've seen the the city really be held back by some of you know, finding a reason that something is historic, um, finding finding whatever that might be, and then putting it through that process as a way um to kill housing in our city, uh, to to move back economic development.

And I want to you to hear from you about how you would balance um actual historic preservation and your um your authority to to you know, is a really important authority to uh stop the the city from moving forward in certain places.

I'll I'll start again as uh as someone who practices architecture in the city of Pittsburgh and regularly come to the historic uh recommission with projects, you know.

It's it's for us it's always a balance between the developers' wants and and uh the pro what the project programming is, which versus the historic character of the building, and there's always stakeholders in play there.

It's the community um rules and regulations, of course.

I think uh I am hoping to balance it uh in a fairly but um I would say development forward way, never at the compromise of quality again.

To me, it's the most important thing to honor a an historic building by adding something purposeful, both in terms of programming and architecture.

And to me, that is again high quality materials always to well considered planning and design.

But again, it's a case by case basis, and there can be, of course, significant cases where you like this has to stay because it it is this significant and we can't change it in the way that you want to change it.

But uh I'd like to think that there is a lot of very talented architects in Pittsburgh that are come with very considered uh approaches and and gentle approaches to projects.

So I'm very much hoping to see some of that and help discuss it with the commission.

I think what you said is important, but I also would emphasize that your your topic of what's gonna happen after the historic building is saved.

Is there going to be programming?

Is there going to be a group that's going to keep it operating?

Is there going to be something that can be offered to the community that is going to be helpful in a way that provides economic development or tourism or whatever it is that we're trying to achieve?

I I think saving it for the sake of saving it without having a plan going forward is a little troublesome to me.

I mean, a great example could be we have so many wonderful churches in Pittsburgh that you know has such a rich cultural history, and unfortunately, many of them are currently abandoned and indicate being dilapidated, and it's a very typical um dilemma that we encounter if someone wants to buy the church and make it residential, for example.

We think that we can do that in a purposeful and honorable way to the building, but sometimes encounter just too many challenges to get through the processes to make that happen, and then five years later the church is still.

Yeah, that's just one example of it would be great if there was better avenues to help move those things forward.

Because as you say, the community many times will use that as kind of the beating sticks if you know there might be one or two neighbors on the block that don't want anything to happen, and then the rest of the neighborhood do not want to see it light it and graffiti all over it.

Right.

So I think that's a just a very real problem that hopefully this commission can help address in a more um efficient and reasonable way.

I think you're exactly right.

In five or ten years, the boarding up and the graffiti and what happens with the parties of people trying to get into the building and maybe not use it for the purposes for which it was intended.

There are buildings around that I think we all know and we have seen for years that are still there and just falling further down.

And I think there should be a way for us to balance what you said and be respectful, but allow it to be maybe made into condominiums or some kind of housing.

I I absolutely understand what you're saying.

Oh, I was just gonna say, I am I really am invested in the city of Pittsburgh.

I'm raising my family here.

I want to see it move forward in a thoughtful, productive way, and how we can be purposeful with the changes that are made.

I don't I don't want to see it boarded up, I don't want to see that happen.

I want it to um grow.

So again, like working with whoever is coming forward on the project that they are interested in and doing the research to behind that existing building and then thoughtfully taking it to the next.

I think it was what in your opening statement where you were saying about looking to the future but moving forward or looking at the past but moving forward.

That's yes.

I would say councilman uh preservation and progress can coexist.

They should, especially in a city like Pittsburgh, and there's more than enough evidence to suggest that it can be done successfully.

If I can speak to what I believe to be the core of your question, and that is the weaponization of this commission uh for specific interests that may not be aligned with the purpose of this commission.

I believe that vision conveys purpose.

And we are ultimately will be responsible for ensuring that the vision that is presented to us, whether it be for preservation or for uh uh progress for lack of a better term, we need to be sure that it is well intentioned for the community that it's that it's in uh and that it enriches the greater vision of the city.

And I think um while we are certainly political appointees, I'm not a politician.

My purpose on this commission will be to exact um the standards that we are held to uh by way of this confirmation.

And so I personally will not allow myself to be weaponized against this body or any other um for any political purposes outside of progress or preservation.

So uh, you know, one of one of the things that's interesting in Pennsylvania is that you don't have to own a building uh for to be deemed historic.

That is not the case everywhere.

Um I have a very good friend who's a preservation planner in in Dallas, and you have to own the building if you want to make it historic.

But I can just point at a building and say, let's let's evaluate that as historic, something I have no interest in.

Um, and we've seen that happen.

You know, we've we've seen that happen for for a variety of different reasons.

Um, and that is something that we now at council, we make sure that on our agenda we see does the owner of the building support this nomination or not.

I will never support a nomination that the owner does not support.

Um, if if if you do if you don't own the building and you don't think you have the capital in order to keep it up to historic guidelines, um someone else shouldn't be pointing at your building and saying that you know this is how you have to have it, and this is how this is the kind of expense.

What you're doing is you're saying you have to keep those kind of expenses on this building.

Um, and it's something that that you know greatly frustrates me with uh the way that we do historic review.

The other thing, one of the organizations that comes before you a lot, um they they came in my district and they they wanted they wanted to nominate something as historic.

Um, and luckily the community group was like, don't do that.

We that doesn't fit with the neighborhood plan.

Um, and then they were like, what else can you make historic?

And that's not how we should be doing historic review.

Historic review should not be I'm looking for something to keep myself interested.

It should be that building actually, you know, is the cathedral of learning.

It's the the tallest uh educational building, I think in North America.

You know, that that's something we want to keep historic.

It shouldn't be I'm looking for a project because I want to uh you know keep funding for my organization, so I have to have so many nominations per year.

I I'm curious if you guys can can talk about like how you'll how you'll manage I, you know, actually doing preservation with uh, you know, just folks that that don't own the building and don't understand the economics of what a historic building means.

I restate that I believe vision conveys intent.

Um and so uh how a presentation is made and what that presentation entails will be significant in how uh I will work in collaboration with my colleagues and the staff to formally make a decision.

I also am unprepared to answer the question specifically about um an individual and or organizations identifying buildings uh that they would intend to preserve because I'm not sure how slippery of a slope that is in terms of whether it would prevent the city from identifying a building that it wants to preserve as a store.

Uh and so I would lean on the council of the staff again uh to help inform that decision.

I think providing encouragement to owners for both development and upkeep of of their historic structures is important, you know, there's a lot of development in Pittsburgh that rely heavily on historic tax credit funding, for example, and NORCAP money, etc., that um would not be possible as new construction, for example.

So having this sort of vast historic building mass in Pittsburgh is in my opinion, can be a great advantage.

And um I think it just is the commission's job to see through that weaponization because I'm I completely understand what you mean.

I've seen it firsthand multiple times, um, and it is a shame, but again, it's also uh it's an important balance that should be held by the the city of Pittsburgh and not necessarily only by the building owner or only by the community, it should be helped by um by a third party um committee, which is what this is.

So I think that's why it's why it's so important.

And so, you know, I represent East Carson Street, which I would imagine is the longest historic district in the city.

I I don't know that to be true, but I would have imagined it is um one of the the situations that happened on the district or in the district in the 90s, the the historic designation of East Carson Street uh and the tax credits that were available from it, actually were very important in order to revitalize the district when the the district was really um dilapidated in the 80s and we were able to move it forward uh was the historic designation going after the tax credits being able to uh preserve preserve the the buildings along there.

But it's a double-edged sword because a couple years ago we had uh an old gas station that was turned into a barbecue restaurant, and someone and it's not not contributing, you know.

This is not George Washington never went to this gas station.

This is just uh an old gas station.

Um not contributing to the district, so it's it's not a contributing property.

Someone wanted to turn it into a different restaurant that was gonna have a volcano at it.

And I got asked, you know, well, if we do that, on the outside in the historic district, and the historic volcano.

They've not I mean they were gonna build a volcano.

Um and so the project was killed in uh historic review, and ultimately that building sits vacant today, and it's been vacant vacant for five, six, seven years.

Nothing nothing has gone in there.

Someone had a plan to make that happen, but when we killed the volcano, we killed the project, and it sits empty.

And that's you know, the kind of things that can happen from the historic review commission.

And I I need to move move the district forward.

So I I see it, you know, I do see it as a double-edged sword.

A lot of that tax credit money has has dried up and and does not exist in the way that it does before.

So I think the last thing, and this isn't a question, and I know I've been long here, um, but I also see one of the roles I would like to see from you is advocating for more tax credit money for historically designated properties to make this possible.

If this is actually something we want to do, it's not gonna come locally, but it's we we need that money to come in and make it make it viable.

Um I've got uh Chinese restaurant that might go out of business because they don't want to repair their windows in the way that's historically accurate, and they just can't afford they can't afford it.

So, you know, uh that that money needs to I I hope that you can see yourselves as advocates to the state to to try to get that money to come come back to us.

You're the East Carson Street is a is a great example of something that's not it's a district, it's a part of Pittsburgh's history that is not just a freestanding building, and I think that whether it's the volcano or not, but kind of chipping away piece by piece and saying, Oh, this particular building in this district is not historically significant, but the it might be okay to do that one, two or three times, but the more times you allow it and the more times you set precedence, um, whether the volcano was warranted or not.

But uh the more you chip away, you're not necessarily doing the district as a whole justice, and you might be doing it a disservice because people see Ace Carson Street as a historic, you know, it's it's an it's very historic significant part of Pittsburgh.

I know it's the longest Victorian main street.

Yeah, and and if suddenly, you know, I've seen in many other cities where the right procedures have not been in place, and then suddenly there's a new Walgreens, and then this thing pops up, and you know, it might not seem like much on a single standing project basis, but then suddenly 10 years later, this the area has lost its character.

So being guardians of seeing looking ahead, and it is a very challenging uh challenging thing to have an opinion about because how am I to say that my opinion is better than yours or yours?

It's a very uh personalized opinion, I guess, to have about historic character, but being able to see the bigger picture of Pittsburgh as a whole and and seeing 10, 20, 50 years ahead, I think would be the goal, hopefully.

Yeah, I mean, but at the same time, I understand like the chipping away.

You know, if we build the volcano, we chip away at the historic desert.

We also chip away at the historic value of the district when this the building sits vacant.

Don't get me wrong, I'm I'm an architect.

I like to get things built and get things through, so I'm I'm certainly uh development forward, but again, it's it's a matter of looking at what what fits right and the the right projects will will fit in that context, and they should be supported, of course.

Yeah, they should be supported.

If that if the Chinese restaurant, if the only reason why they're leaving is because of that building, let's find ways to either through tax credits, etc.

to help them succeed they're a member of that community now and help them you know preserve the building in a right thoughtful way and exist there and not you know I'm wondering about that as well some of the facade money some of the other ways that you can improve your building would they be eligible for that I I think I think exploring other ways to keep the Chinese restaurant open in spite of them needing new windows that they can't afford at this time.

Yeah but it you know at the same time the you know the facade grants the the money doesn't go very far so you know that's a limited budget there and and we've got other storefronts that also need that money to to stay open businesses and make our other main streets thrive um and and we're putting this requirement on a business um that is is now going to be happy to to take their business out to Cranberry or wherever you know and then I've got another storefront I've got to fix so all right I think I've I've gone a lot longer than I intended to thank you Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Councilman Warwick um yeah thank you thanks everyone for being here and um for putting your hat in the ring for the commission it's uh so yeah I have some I mean it's all sort of along the same lines um uh the first thing is like so with historic designation and you know any any building that's named histor you know the sort of and maybe this is sort of to the councilman's point it that really scares people off like I have a I have a building in Hazelwood it's the old Hazelwood library um it's a beautiful old building and there have been three maybe four different folks who have come through with ideas for projects luckily we just got a grant to to fix the roof so that we don't lose the building entirely right but um you know I have someone who's interested in the building now for a pro you know this is very just very early stages but when I talked to them this idea of his like it it was like oh is the building designated historic like oh and it was like yeah it is and it was just like oh I mean you could just it was just like grown like to the and so this notion that again this building could just disappear because we make it too hard for someone to to you know come in and and just kind of do what they want to do with the building so I don't know if you have thoughts about that and what the role that the commission might play in those conversations.

That's the balance that we talked about earlier you don't want it to stay vacant you don't want it's awful I mean it's just like terrible for a building graffiti it's any structure to be vacant for five or ten or whatever it just falls apart so you don't want that but you have to be able to negotiate that balance of what's the building going to be used for is the outside integrity of the building at least the way it appears if it's a historic district is it going to be maintained there are all kinds of questions that I would ask going forward and I understand I've heard the groan of people that I know that are in uh historic buildings but I'm inclined to preserve that integrity of the street or of the building or or whatever it is but I'm not inclined to do it in in the instead of allowing it to move forward in a different kind of um mix of uses that would as I said preserve what it looks like to the historic district, but would keep it from falling down.

I'm I think that balance is something that we all would have to struggle with.

And I assume it also ties to the to the guidelines that we're adhering to and and reviewing those and in ensuring enough flexibility in order to be able to respectfully address a number of different types and styles of project that it the guidelines are not too rigid and they allow for that for that reuse for a modern purpose, but without letting someone just do exactly whatever they want with it, which could be, you know, painted purple or cladding in corrugated metal.

I you know, I right so it's it is that balance, but uh you know, ensuring the the flexibility in the commission's um guidelines and the workings that we're bound by I think is is very important.

I think I think the the issue is more I mean I I see what you mean, but uh you know the interest in the building is to preserve the right as sort of an opportunity to preserve to do something good for the community, but I think the concern is more about material, I mean right, yeah, like materials, like you know, this kind of roof versus the uh roof that's gonna cost whatever four times as much because it's like the historic this or that.

Yeah, yeah.

So um anyway, well that that's good to know.

I mean, just that that I feel like that flexibility definitely needs to be there, right?

And because I mean like with the Neal and also maybe the history of why the building is, because this, you know, much like the Neil Loghouse is a building that the city of Pittsburgh just let rot, right?

For a very long time, and that's why it is the way that it is, right?

Like we should have cared for that building long ago, and we didn't, you know, for whatever reason.

Yeah, sort of in this, this this conversation about historic districts.

It's funny because we had a meeting of um of RCOs from around the city.

There was some talk of changing, you know, the RCO guidelines and whatnot, and we had there was it was, and I I I don't have a historic district in my district, but um there was one person on the call from I think it was like the Mexican War Streets, and they were