Good morning and welcome to the regular meeting of City Council on Friday, August twenty eighth, two thousand twenty-six.

Would a clerk please take the role?

Mr.

Charland, Mr.

Coghill.

Ms.

Gross.

Mr.

Mosley.

Here.

Mrs.

Salonetra.

Here.

Mrs.

Strasberger.

Mrs.

Warwick.

Mr.

Wilson.

Mr.

Lavelle President.

Here.

Five members present.

Thank you.

For those who are able, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

After which, please remain standing for a moment of silence in remembrance of Gloria Faroosin, who was a long time activist and community activist within our within the city of Pittsburgh that we all knew and loved dearly.

Thank you.

Second.

But that even he could see that his employees were being harassed and questioned when they stayed late on Fridays and Saturdays to close up shop, harangued while they were trying to get to their cars in nearby parking lots because of this supposed effort to reduce crime.

And I simply don't think that harassment and questioning of innocent people is something that's going to reduce crime in this instance.

There's an adage, you know, in the airline industry that you never talk about crash safety if you want to improve the reputation of the industry.

Because it gets people thinking about crashes.

And we hear over and over again that this is about improving the reputation of the South Side, about making it look good to the public.

Well, here is what the public sees now when they look up the South Side from CBS Pittsburgh, some calling for an end to Pittsburgh's new street festival just weeks after it launched, talking about crime only being pushed onto the side streets like Muriel and Bingham.

About 80 to 85% of businesses being harmed, as we've seen before, that business is simply dead on the South Side as a result, that they're not pouring into the South Side as much as the South Side making money pours back into them.

And from Pittsburgh's public source, they report that there is no evidence provided that this effort has reduced crime in the wider area.

Simply that it is pushed crime that was taking place in the bar district into the surrounding streets and areas where Pittsburgh's police are no longer monitoring it as severely.

Scrutiny that even organizations like the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union are now applying to this gross violation of the public civil liberties.

I urge you to do something about it.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Kenneth Arble.

Is Kenneth Arble with us?

If not, our next register speaker is Ralph Williams.

Excuse me.

Oh man, sorry about that.

Uh thank you, uh, President Lavelle, members of council.

I don't have to talk about today, but I had to stop my track myself because Wednesday night uh my good friend in media, smoked and gym frazier passed away.

And uh Smoke and Jim and I give a sports program on AM 1250 the answer.

Not only did we do that sports radio show, but I've been coming down here for years now, asking you, pleading with you, and with the prior administration to do something about PC TV.

And in case you're not aware that you never watched any of the programs on PC TV, Channel 21.

Smoking chill frazier was on a lot of them.

Okay.

Smoke and chill was not only a friend of mine, but he also was my best friend, and he also was the face of PC TV.

That you let shut down, that you the power administration left shut down.

Many of us producers came down here and said something, and nothing was done as usual.

Okay.

I didn't want to get into this today because I had a bunch of other things I wanted to talk about.

But this is disturbing to me because my best friend has now passed away, smoking Jim Frazier.

And I some of you know who he is.

You see him on TV, he was on BCFC, you know, talking sports with Dee Thompson and several other people, okay, around the media circuits in Pittsburgh.