Category: Commentary/Editorial || By

This website and its editor are not in the business of apologizing for politicians, elected officials or public servants. I prefer complaining.

For instance, back in May, this reporter was told that the city was going to clean up the approach ramps to the Mansfield Bridge. As far as I can tell, not a single pile of debris has been touched. A lamppost that was knocked down in a traffic accident more than a year ago is still sitting in the middle of the sidewalk.

(Hey, budget problems I can dig, but can't someone go out there with a dump truck and haul away the damn lamppost? Or else can I have it for the scrap value?)

Anyway, Tube City Almanac exists to print the news and raise hell. (That's why my business cards give my title as "local malcontent.")

But after reading the comments to Dec. 18's story, "Walnut St. Corridor Gets Makeover in '09," I thought a few kind words were in order.

(Just this once, mind you. I don't intend this "helpfulness" thing to be part of a trend. I have a lack of reputation to uphold.)

. . .

Several Alert Readers questioned whether the city is wasting money by improving Kelly Park and returning Fifth Avenue to two-way traffic.

They argued that McKeesport officials would be wiser to clean up the entrances to the city --- especially near UPMC McKeesport hospital and the Mansfield Bridge (ahem!) --- instead. The implication was that renovating Kelly Park and Fifth Avenue are a waste of time, money or both.

A couple of points spring to mind. First, there is public and private grant money available for capital improvement projects. That's how the Kelly Park and Fifth Avenue projects are being funded --- through grants.

Generally speaking, grants are not available for operating expenses. For instance, when it comes to public safety, a local municipality could probably get money to buy a bomb-disposal robot, but not to pay police officers or paramedics.

It's stupid, but that's the system. If you want to complain, start by going back to 1985 and telling Ronald Reagan not to eliminate federal revenue sharing.

. . .

Second, a lot of the blight you see Downtown, in Duquesne or in other Mon Valley communities is on private property.

Several people have asked, for instance, about the buildings around the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Lysle Boulevard; those are privately owned buildings. Government has very limited authority to touch private property --- as it should.

Despite what Jim Quinn and certain newspaper editorial boards think, this isn't a socialist country. (Yet. Check back Jan. 21, comrades, once Party Secretary Obama has transformed this bourgeois capitalist state into a glorious worker's paradise! But --- I've said too much!)

Government agencies can intervene if a building presents a safety, health or fire hazard to the public. They can't intervene because someone chose to leave their building empty, or unkempt, or "ugly." There's no law against "ugly."

CIties, boroughs and townships can enact zoning ordinances that regulate certain things, but those generally apply only to new buildings, not existing structures.

. . .

There are "eminent domain" rules that municipalities can use to take over commercial properties for redevelopment. McKeesporters may remember the last time that city government used eminent domain to demolish blighted buildings for commercial reuse.

The city gained wonderful public spaces like Midtown Plaza, the Executive Building and Hi-View Gardens Apartments.

Of course, sometimes city-funded redevelopment campaigns don't have such negative results, but even when they go well, they take a long time, and they're expensive. The city of Pittsburgh, for instance, successfully shut down the Garden Theatre, a porno house on the North Side. But it took Pittsburgh 10 years and well over a million taxpayer dollars.

That's why --- generally speaking --- commercial development should remain the bailiwick of the private sector. The city is doing what it legally can by tearing down unsafe, abandoned buildings and funding programs that help homeowners pay for repairs.

. . .

The problem faced by McKeesport, Glassport, Clairton, Duquesne and all of the other aging communities in our valleys is that there's no demand for 100-year-old commercial buildings that weren't very good to begin with. Nobody wants two- and three-story office buildings without adjacent parking.

Ditto for 1910s and '20s frame houses without garages or air conditioning. Even if the houses were modern, we'd still lack the young, mobile population to fill them.

The Mon-Yough area never had a "housing bubble" because for the last 30 years, people have been dying faster than they could get sub-prime mortgages.

. . .

Now, if I had the answer for how to get people to move back to Western Pennsylvania and repopulate the Mon Valley, well, hell, I wouldn't be writing this.

From where I sit, fixing up Kelly Park isn't a bad idea, and as far as returning two-way traffic to Fifth Avenue between Coursin and Market --- why not?

Yes, Fifth Avenue is narrow. There also aren't any people using it. Most weekdays you can lie down in Fifth Avenue at 12 noon and take a nap. If restoring two-way traffic encourages someone to use the street --- or, God forbid, open a business --- it's a fine idea.

There are plenty of things to complain about in the city of McKeesport and the surrounding communities. But a couple of projects which may make a few areas more attractive (at no direct cost to local taxpayers) aren't among them.