Dear City Council District 2 Voter,
City Council District 2 needs someone who is willing and able to challenge the status quo. My name is David Tessitor. I am on your election ballot as the independent candidate for City Council, District 2. Before you vote, I hope you’ll consider the following:
If, rather than party politics, your priority when making your choice is the betterment of the City and your neighborhood, if you want City Council to consider your needs and those of your family, friends, and neighbors, then please consider what I can bring to City Council as your representative.
My approach has always been bottom-up. It starts with you, your concerns, and I hope your involvement. The region’s top-down governance has brought the City to its knees, leaving it now out of money with the continuing decline of District 2. Rather than blaming individuals, the problem is structural. A bad structure handicaps and limits its people; a good structure lets them excel.
We need structural solutions! – This is where my decades of experience with community organizing, urban public policy, and a history of combating public corruption can make all the difference.
Community Advisory Team (CAT)
First and foremost, we need a structural framework and new tools to enable you and other concerned citizens to have real influence – where you can acquire pertinent information that may affect you; where you can investigate and understand the workings of our government; where you can propose real, viable solutions; and where you can reach past the behind-the-scenes politics to pursue their implementation.
Toward that end, I have initiated a proactive public participation process that enables you to have your voice heard and not be swept aside. Called a Community Advisory Team (“CAT”), it provides a structural framework and gives you and other concerned citizens the tools to step around the inside political influences and effect responsible governance. It’s online at: CommunityAdvisory.Team
Beyond the CAT, there are several structural reforms which I see as being able to have a profound impact on District 2 as well as the rest of our City, but I need your vote and help to bring them about.
Parks
A number of City Parks are in deplorable condition, especially Sheraden Park, District 2’s largest traditional park. Years ago, the City Department of Parks & Recreation had the sole responsibility for everything – all parks operations, programming, and maintenance were administered and handled by its employees, managers, and trained parks professionals.
In the 1990’s someone had the “bright” idea that it would be more efficient to break that up and have the Department of Public Works do all the City maintenance. So workers who did road repairs were to use those skills in maintaining the parks’ natural environment, and the quality began to decline. But it wasn’t the DPW workers fault, it was structural.
Some of the more affluent city residents formed the Parks Conservancy to assist in park maintenance. Gradually, that group became an equal (some might say the dominant) force in the parks management.
They complained that more money was needed and convinced the voters of Pittsburgh to approve a referendum for a new separate parks tax. Voters were told it would be used to revitalize parks in distressed neighborhoods. Since taking effect in 2021, over $10.5 million has been added each year to a Parks Trust Fund. But little, if any, of that money has been spent, accumulating more as the parks wait in limbo.
At this time there are now 6 entities responsible for the parks: Parks & Recreation; DPW; DPW’s Forestry Division; the Parks Conservancy; City Planning; and the Mayor’s office. You’ve probably heard the old saying: “Too many cooks spoil the broth!” This has been a major structural problem.
Seeing the need, rather than waiting to be elected, I have drawn attention to the situation by holding 2 volunteer work days in Sheraden Park, cleaning out years of overgrowth in a former picnic and cookout area along the road to the basketball court. We’ve exposed and cleaned up the beautiful stone wall and stone steps so it can now be used once again. More needs to be done, but our effort demonstrates what minimal maintenance could do. Yet it isn’t happening due to the dysfunctional structural arrangement.
The structural solution is to re-establish unitary operations and management of the City parks. How this may best be achieved is an excellent subject for the Community Advisory Team to investigate. There are differing configurations used elsewhere. These can be analyzed to develop an optimal proposal. We don’t need to spend millions for politically connected consultants who are tied to the status quo when reasonable concerned individuals can work together effectively through the CAT process.
If you want this to happen, then this Fall you need to vote for me to represent Council District 2. I am known to be tenacious, though polite – I don’t stop until what is needed is accomplished.
Neighborhood Integrated Services Team
In 2000, the Neighborhoods USA national convention was held in Pittsburgh. Vancouver, BC sent a delegation to present their structural approach for providing city services in their neighborhoods. Called a Neighborhood Integrated Services Team (NIST), it consists of a person from each service having both some level of decision-making and the hands-on provision of that service in the neighborhood. They meet every two weeks to identify and address that neighborhood’s needs. With all present at the table, the buck can’t be passed to someone not there. If something requires higher approval, rather than a subordinate telling their boss what to do, it is sent up with the weight of the NIST behind it.
In the past, I have proposed creating a Department of Neighborhoods. One half of which would be to administer a NIST process. The other half would be responsible for a holistic approach to neighborhood revitalization designed to revitalize distressed properties. By issuing individual contracts which the local residents with building skills could easily undertake and by including a comprehensive program of business services to cover those skills which the participants lack, local residents could start their own firm restoring abandoned and distressed properties. With money staying in the neighborhoods local suppliers and other services could raise the economic standing of residents and avoid their displacement by gentrification.
As District 2’s new City Council member, I will begin a District 2 NIST by inviting each public service to send a person with hands-on responsibility for providing its service locally. By demonstrating the effectiveness, I can convince Council to institute the NIST process citywide – ideally as part of my full Department of Neighborhoods proposal (online at: tessitor.com/pdf/dept-of-neighborhoods.pdf).
However, for this structural solution I must be elected, which depends upon your vote for me.
Connecting the City and Airport via rapid rail
In the 1980’s, Tom Foerster announced that the airport will be the region’s new central business district. Ever since an out-migration has drained the City and District 2 of people and investment, backed by the Allegheny Conference, which controls the region’s public policy and promotes real estate speculation, primarily as land consumptive suburban sprawl.
Also in the 1980’s, real estate speculator Jack Buncher, bought the Corliss rail yards from bankrupt Con Rail for over $900,000 and made many times that by converting it into the Corliss Business Park. Having a leftover remnant right-of-way extending to Carnegie, PA, Buncher sought to sell it to the Port Authority for an Airport Busway (since renamed the West Busway). Buncher wanted $4 million; PAT took it for $2 million using eminent domain; Buncher sued; and they settled out of court for $7 million.
Meanwhile, the $326 million in federal funding for the busway could have instead built a rapid rail connection from Steel Plaza into the airport’s Air-side Terminal. The planning process was fundamentally flawed, which I uncovered through a proactive public participation process which I initiated with the regional transportation planning agency. I sued in the state courts, losing before the PA Supreme Court through a dubious ruling. Then I organized a number of citizens and sued in federal court – the District Court said we were too early and the US Court of Appeals said we were too late.
The busway went on to waste its money on less than half the project and only avoided having to pay it back as required by law when Senator Santorum managed to get Congress to give special dispensation that allowed the responsible local officials to get off scot free.
The lack of a rail connection to the airport counted heavily against Pittsburgh’s selection as a second headquarters for Amazon. In contrast, Philadelphia has 4 rail stations in its airport terminal. Instead, air travelers to Pittsburgh are now met with an arcane transit connection, and Pittsburgh compares poorly with other cities that are connected by rail to their airports, such as Cleveland, Ohio.
The time is now to finally pursue a successful Airport-City rapid rail connection. Making the trip in under 15 minutes, a person would be closer to their plane at a City terminal on the south shore of the Mon than at their car in the airport parking lot. The route is still available. The new airport terminal even has the provision for adding a rail station built into it. Instead of continuing to move the city out to the airport, we could have a rapid rail connection that would effectively move the airport into the city.
A new landside terminal built on the south shore of the Mon next to the Panhandle Bridge could offer airline ticketing and check-in services for air passengers before being whisked out to use the airport’s airside terminal. A new stop on the T line could be built into the City terminal, providing rail transit from Downtown to the airport. The result would be a boost to Downtown and breathe new economic vitality into District 2, especially along the Mon where commerce is now struggling. The two inclines would make access to the airport an easy walk from the Mt Washington and Duquesne Heights neighborhoods.
The is still much that will need to be worked out, such as how to structure the operations through a regional rail authority and financing arrangements. A Community Advisory Team committee could review various options and present their findings. But nothing will ever happen without City Council backing the endeavor, and that will never happen without a District 2 Council Member who has the tenacity and the technical understanding to lead the charge – something I think I’ve demonstrated very well over the years.
This is a structural solution that will depend upon your vote for me this Fall.
Your choice: City over party politics or party over the City’s well-being
I have been non-partisan for decades. I’ve worked to support good candidates of both major parties and some minor parties. I have over four decades experience exposing and fighting public corruption and over three decades working with urban public policy and community organizing in Pittsburgh:
► I started citizen organizing as the Executive Director of an environmental group once considered the best in Pennsylvania. Before my involvement, it had declined to only 5 dues paying members and was about to close down. As a structural solution, I quickly started 5 areas of programming and in just 18 months increased the dues paying membership to over 125 with a mailing list of over 1000.
► I then founded E Watch, an environmental monitoring effort to assist environmental agencies. I was recruited by US EPA and US Fish & Wildlife to help them expose Pittsburgh having the worst record in the country for protection of wetlands and streams. I worked with Teresa and Senator John Heinz to put together a joint agency investigation for which I led the field investigation. When the findings came out, Senator Heinz was livid and scheduled to act upon it, but he died the week before in an airplane crash.
► I co-founded and was Project Director of the American Town & Country Alliance, a Tides Center Project, a public policy effort to address the problem of modern suburban sprawl and urban decline. Proposals we developed are still relevant today, but they have yet to be accepted by our political establishment.
► I initiated an innovative proactive public participation process with regional transportation planning. It so impressed the US Federal Highway Administration, they used it as their example of excellence in public participation when working with communities across the country. We identified improprieties with the planning process, including massive fraud and falsifications that removed 40% of the federal funding needed for infrastructure maintenance ($12 billion at the time) and used it to promote real estate speculation – a direct cause of the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse and our decaying infrastructure.
► I organized to save the historic Greater Pittsburgh Airport terminal, an architectural masterpiece that was once the largest air terminal in the world for 20 years. Discovering improprieties and corruption, I pursued and received a federal injunction to stop its demolition, however the judge reversed the decision upon accepting a $3 million employment contract from a politically connected Pittsburgh law firm. The case got as high as the US Supreme court but an affidavit from a politically connected engineering firm blocked our efforts; that firm now has their headquarters on the same site in a subsidized building.
► I organized to stop the closure of the West End and Mt Washington branch libraries. For 12 years the library system had 2 directors who had no library experience; I fought to have its director meet the state requirement for library experience. When the library stopped its Three Rivers Free-Net that hosted over 200 nonprofit websites, I created PittsburghFree.Net to host the abandoned sites for free. I still run it.
► I proposed, wrote, and organized to put a 2016 Open Government Amendment to the Pittsburgh City Charter on the ballot. I acquired a federal injunction that enabled us to hire paid canvassers only to have a politically connected local judge later ignore case law and remove it from the ballot just 2 days before the ballots went to print, thus preventing us from getting it get back on through an appeal.
► I have been a Judge of Elections for over a dozen years and have worked as part of Vote Allegheny to have the County adopt and use secure election equipment and practices.
If you put the welfare and prospects for A Better Pittsburgh above voting the party line, then I hope you feel I deserve your vote. Beyond that, I hope you will become involved with the District 2 CAT.
Thank you,
David Tessitor
Elect-Dave.com – Independent candidate for City Council, District 2