This Week’s Top Agenda Items

• Driver’s ed pilot program could help city residents get jobs
• Nonprofit to support teams of police, social workers
• City is renting rooftops for surveillance cameras

Driver’s ed pilot program could help city residents get jobs ★

• Council Member Barb Warwick of Greenfield proposed resurrecting a workforce development program that has been dormant for six years and spending the money to teach city residents to drive.
• She said the program still has $300,000 sitting unused and could create a pilot program for people in workforce development programs to obtain or reinstate their driver’s license.
• Employers often require employees to have a driver’s license even if driving is not part of the job description. The problem is nothing new. In 2016 the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 30% of civilian jobs involve some driving.
• The driver’s license requirement creates an often unnecessary barrier to entering the workforce. In the past three years, Oregon, Washington and California have banned the practice unless driving is essential to the job. Council Member Anthony Coghill of Beechview said that obtaining a license is particularly difficult for people who do not have access to a car to practice driving.
• Council Member Bob Charland of the South Side said that he has become “radicalized” on the importance of the issue. “I thought it was a kind of silly thing for the city to get involved in,” he said, “and now I think it is, like, one of the most important things that we can be involved in.”
• The proposed legislation is an amendment to the ordinance that created the workforce development fund which called for the city to work with the state and federal governments to help people pay off funds for non-driving related tickets that lead to license suspensions. The amended legislation would also create a program for drivers’ education which could include courses for a commercial driver’s license (CDL).
• Warwick said the money could be used for students in Pittsburgh Public Schools’ career and technical education programs, the Trade Institute of Pittsburgh and apprenticeship programs.
• The legislation would allow the Department of Human Resources and the Office of Management and Budget to manage the distribution of the money and allow the city authority to receive money from outside sources to enhance the fund.

Nonprofit to support teams of police, social workers ★

• The Department of Public Safety requested council approval for a $483,000 donation from the Baldwin-based nonprofit Community Family Advocates.
• Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt said the donation is intended for the city’s Co-Response program, which is run through the Office of Community Health and Safety. Co-Response teams have social workers who respond with police officers to emergency calls for people in mental and behavioral health crises. The teams are trained to both provide appropriate support and reduce the use of force in mental or behavioral health emergencies.
• The donation is specifically for supporting Downtown coverage and would primarily pay for police overtime, Schmidt said.
• Co-response police officers work four 10-hour shifts a week and are currently not overtime eligible, though the department is looking for that to change. Three of the city’s six police zones have access to co-response, and those that do only have teams available weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Schmidt estimated that Co-Response currently has fewer than 20 social workers. He said it has been difficult to recruit social workers who are used to working in more controlled environments.
• “We’re looking at these dollars as ways to figure out how we can incentivize folks to come work evenings and weekends, because mental health crises happen 24/7,” he said.
• The money will go through the county’s Department of Human Services, which also received a donation from Community Family Advocates.

City is renting rooftops for surveillance cameras ★

• Despite a vote in support of installing rooftop cameras in the city, Council Member Deb Gross of Highland Park expressed concerns about their use.
• The bill, if it passes final adoption, authorizes the continued use of a condominium roof in Mount Washington for video cameras and related equipment. The legislation says the equipment is “for the purpose of providing enhanced security to [the city’s] citizens.”
• The city first entered a memorandum of understanding with the Plaza at Grandview Owner’s Association in 2010. Gross said the Sept. 10 meeting was the first she had heard about the cameras and that council had been previously surprised by a similar agreement for cameras on top of the U.S. Steel Tower.
• Schmidt said that the Grandview rooftop is used primarily for camera network equipment with “one or two” cameras there that monitor traffic-level incidents but do not have the capacity to zoom into license plates or faces as Gross feared. She said she would take Schmidt up on his offer to see the cameras herself.
• The new five-year agreement will begin Jan. 1 and will cost the city a total of $105,600.