Moderator (Ken Rice):
Welcome to a debate in the Pittsburgh mayoral race from the studios of KDKA TV. Hello and welcome everyone to KDKA's debate in the race for Pittsburgh mayor. I'm Ken Rice and I'll be serving as moderator. Let's welcome the candidates. On the left, Democrat Corey O'Connor and on the right, Republican Tony Moreno. Mr. O'Connor is 41. He lives in Point Breeze and currently serves as Allegheny County Controller. Mr. Moreno is 57. He lives in Brighton Heights and is retired from the Pittsburgh Police Bureau. I'll be joined in questioning the candidates by Lisa Smith, KDKA's director of community impact, and John Delano, retired KDKA political editor. Here are the rules for our debate. Candidates will have one minute to answer our questions, then 30 seconds for rebuttals to their opponent's answers. The questioners may jump in with follow-ups, and we'll make sure the response times are fair. And finally, each candidate will have 90 seconds for a closing statement. And so, let's begin. We held a coin flip earlier. Mr. O'Connor won and opted to take the second closing statement and Mr. Moreno opted to have Mr. O'Connor field the first question first.
Ken Rice:
So, Mr. O'Connor, this goes to you. What are one or two things that Mayor Gayy is doing that you will stop doing and what are one or two things that he's initiated that you'll keep doing?
Corey O'Connor:
Great question and thank you guys for hosting us again. What I believe he's doing well is a program called Vision Zero where it protects our bikers, our walkers, our street safety, our calming has done a very, very good job. He's also invested in a program called Reach which is community outreach in neighborhoods that need it when you're seeing violent crime kick up. And I think he's done a very good job of that. What he hasn't done a very good job of over the last two years is growing our city. We have to start growing in order to take care of the other issue that the mayor's been lacking in is his transparency on our budget. We know we have a budget deficit that's coming up, but in order to get out of that, we can't just continue to tax and cut. We have to start growing. And I think this administration has lacked in transparency and lacked in a vision of how we're going to grow our city.
Tony Moreno:
Well, we're going to go forward and be transparent in how we're going to spend our money. Mayor Gayy has put forth funds for housing and people buying houses trying to make it available for community members that haven't traditionally been able to buy a house. There's programs being put forward and money being placed so they can realize the American dream of home ownership. And in the same turn, we are wasting so much money in this city. We need to address our needs in a matrix of importance. We need to make sure that we're taking care of people first financially. The city can see how the government is treating them by how they spend their money. And right now, it's not a good look. We are not spending our money where it's necessary to keep the city going, to keep our residents safe, and to keep people coming back to Pittsburgh.
Corey O'Connor:
I would just add to that that the mayor came in at a time where we had an influx of actual cash. When I left city council, there was a surplus and then we actually got $340 million of COVID relief money. That money was not well spent in building a future for our city. When you talk about affordable housing and workforce housing, we should have shovel-ready sites with that $340 million that wasn't put back into our neighborhoods. Pittsburgh's made up of neighborhoods and that's where we have to invest.
Tony Moreno:
They took that money, the COVID money, and completely squandered it. There was $112 million that were put forward for workforce stabilization, and that money has not gone towards workforce stabilization. When this went forward, Cory O'Connor put forth a hiring freeze. At the same time, there was $112 million specifically laid out to prevent a hiring freeze. It was to bolster our public servants and our frontline workers and the money didn't go into their hands.
Lisa Smith:
Thank you, Mr. Moreno. The first question, this question goes to you. If elected mayor, you will very likely inherit a city budget that is very lean. However, the city has multi-million dollar needs. Police officers, firefighters, EMS staffing, public works equipment, ambulances, the list is long. In fact, here is how city controller Rachel Heistler describes city ambulances to KDKA TV News. If you're having a medical event or I'm having a medical event, do you want an ambulance that's older than, you know, the Bush administration to pick you up? So, in addition, she calls plans to use the city's rainy day funds for operating budget needs unsustainable. So, if elected mayor, how will you handle this budget? Will it mean raising taxes? Will it mean layoffs? Or will you need to reduce services?
Tony Moreno:
We need to focus on where it's important to spend our money first. Our public safety is number one. It's the number one thing a mayor has to focus on. We are pimping out our medics and our police. When you call 911 and you don't have a police officer available to show up, but you're watching a Pirates game and you see four police officers on the field, it leads a question to why aren't they there? And it's because when we come under a budget shortfall in the city of Pittsburgh, the first thing we do is attack the people who protect us. Attack the people who we take money away from the people who are coming to take our grandparents to the hospital if they fall, who are coming to our neighbor's house if someone's breaking in. We focus on taking away public safety instead of refocusing money where it's important. I'm going to come in, put a matrix and start from the beginning on where money needs to take care of people first and instead of folly like arts in the park.
Corey O'Connor:
Again, the question is: Will you raise taxes? Will you have layoffs or reduce services? First thing, you have to have transparency. As the city controller has mentioned and in my current role I was the first one to blow the whistle on the county's structural deficit and I think you have to get in there and look at the transparency and lack thereof. What are the contracts that exist? Can we refinance old bonds to save us money? We have to look at each and every line item in the current budget because we know last year was false. When you only have a couple million dollars for police overtime, we know that's a faulty budget. So, we have to be very upfront and transparent when it comes to creating other opportunities to fund programs like purchasing ambulances. I believe that's where we have a community and a nonprofit agreement where we can start talking about purchasing those assets, taking them off the city tax rolls and having a community benefits agreement that's going to help save our cost and invest in our capital so that we can make sure that our residents are safe.
Tony Moreno:
We deal with transparency and accountability. We had money to address these things. When we talk about vehicles, they had money for vehicles and they did invest in vehicles. They spent it on 150 electric vehicles with all their charging stations. They didn't invest in medic trucks. They didn't invest in police cars. They didn't invest in the things that we need to take care of us. Now, that's where I will change this. I will put money towards the things that are going to help people on the street right now instead of things that don't matter in the end run for people's lives.
Corey O'Connor:
Yes, we all know that that money was squandered, especially the COVID relief money over the last couple years, but for us to get back in the plus, we have to start an economic challenge here, which is growing. This city hasn't been appreciated in many, many years. But you have opportunity all around us to invest in young entrepreneurs, for small businesses to continue to grow. That's where we have to invest so we can grow our tax base, bring more people back to the city of Pittsburgh because if we continue to grow, it'll solve a lot of these tax problems.
Lisa Smith:
Mr. O'Connor, the ICE immigration arrests in Pittsburgh have really escalated over the summer and as you know about a dozen local government agencies have signed cooperation agreements with ICE but Pittsburgh has not. So what would you do as mayor? Should Pittsburgh declare itself a sanctuary city? Or would you require the city police and city agencies to cooperate with ICE in the removal of illegal undocumented immigrants from the city?
Corey O'Connor:
First off, Pittsburgh is a welcoming city. If you are in our city, whether you're here for a day, a minute, an hour, a year, 20 years, we are here to protect your rights. And that's what our job is as a city. I will not partner with organizations like ICE because for me we are a welcoming city in the city of Pittsburgh. When you partner with ICE, you actually put more lives in danger. What do I mean by that? If you have a partnership with organizations like that, people are afraid to call 911. People are afraid to call 911 for emergencies. We cannot have that. Our job is not to worry about the federal government. Our job is to worry about the people of Pittsburgh and making Pittsburgh a welcoming, safe place.
Tony Moreno:
As a councilman, Mr. O'Connor was on the immigration and refugee committee. They set this up. They brought people into our city without a place to live, without jobs, without any future, without anybody showing them how to speak English, how we live as Pittsburghers. So now all this money is being focused on there. Mr. O'Connor says and he touts that he raised 40 new businesses for the immigrants in other parts of the city. And at the same time, our legacy communities that have been here did not see that same kind of funding like in Homewood. There weren't 40 new businesses built in Homewood. Nobody bought a building in Homewood for $1 and then gave them millions of dollars to refurbish it like they did in Beach View. The URA sold that to Kasa San Jose for $1, this 20 plus unit building and then gave them money to refurbish it. Those monies are not being focused to the legacies that are here in Pittsburgh and we need to readjust that and take care of the people here first.
Lisa Smith:
Mr. Moreno, just to be clear, would you cooperate then with ICE?
Tony Moreno:
It's in our rules and regulations. The city police officers are by rule ordered to when somebody from the federal government has a legal reason to be here, they have to respond. They have to partner. And there's a good reason for it because the city of Pittsburgh police knows our communities. They know where they're going and they know how to get there. It's important that our police officers are there so the people that are being addressed are safe and the law enforcement officials are safe. Without that, it'll be mayhem.
Corey O'Connor:
Yeah, I'll respond to the lack of welcoming from my opponent. Pittsburgh is built on immigrants. Look at each and every one of our neighborhoods, how they were founded. There are immigrants all across the city. When he's talking about funding for 40 companies, I never said there were companies that got funding from the city of Pittsburgh. 40 immigrants moved to our region and started their own companies. You want to grow Pittsburgh, you have to accept that we accept everybody in this city. We want you to come to Pittsburgh. That's how we're going to build and grow and create dynamic, diverse neighborhoods. That's what Pittsburgh's all about. It's a melting pot.
Tony Moreno:
We're driving Black families out of the city of Pittsburgh because we don't focus our money on them. We show it every single day by our budget. They move money to places that are away from the people who need it the most. We have made this whole entire organization a money laundering pit and it's hurting people on the streets. So I want to take our money and focus on Pittsburgh first before we can have anybody else come in here and take our resources that are so scarce.
Ken Rice:
Let me ask a somewhat related question if I may. Hardly a week goes by without President Trump threatening to send National Guard to an American city. Chicago is the most recent. If the president targeted Pittsburgh, what would be your response as mayor, Mr. Moreno? What is your view of using American troops not trained in community policing against American citizens?
Tony Moreno:
Well, I'll tell you where you're going to see the federal government come in, and that's when the drafts here. You're going to see them here. But as far as them coming here, it's because of Mr. O'Connor and his group of people defunded the police back in 2020. They took all of that money away from the police department. $10 million a year have been removed from the police training budget and put into the stop the violence budget. We knew how it was going to be spent in the police training budget, but we don't know what happened to it in the stop the violence funds. That young man in Carrick High School was a victim of exactly that. There was nobody there to protect him. He was begging for help. His family was begging for help. The stop the violence representative stepped in and he said, "We need to move them." And when they asked for the funds to move them, they said, "We didn't have it because $10 million a year, $36 million have been squandered in that." And you know what happens? He blames the Black guy for not having enough police officers and he's the one that defunded them with Dan Gilman and Ricky Burgess.
Ken Rice:
I want to come back to my question. Would you welcome the National Guard to Pittsburgh if the president so determined?
Tony Moreno:
We don't need them. If we do our jobs here, we won't need them if we did the right thing. And if they do come, then we're going to have to make sure that they go by the rules and regulations according to the city of Pittsburgh police. And we are going to make sure that there's monitors there so nobody's rights are violated, everybody acts in line with the way that they're supposed to.
Ken Rice:
Mr. O'Connor, same question.
Corey O'Connor:
There's a lot to respond to that one, but I'll answer your question first. No, this is a Pittsburgh thing that we can handle. First of all, you hire a full-time chief of police. You build morale back in our police force, and then you continue to do co-response that we've seen work successfully in all of our community neighborhoods. So no, we do not need cooperation from outside agencies. This is a Pittsburgh situation and we can handle it as Pittsburghers.
Ken Rice:
And so if the National Guard came to Pittsburgh, you would do what?
Corey O'Connor:
I would say sorry, but we can handle this ourselves. We do not need cooperation from outside agencies. And when we go back to defunding the police, you know, I would look at my record when I was on city council at one point, we had over a thousand officers. I've always supported our public safety departments and I always will continue to do so all three of those major organizations.
Tony Moreno:
It's in black and white. These were his votes. This is his responsibility and his in partnership with Ricky Burgess and Dan Gilman from Bill Peduto's office. They organized this. They talked about it in 2018 and lowering the police department. They came to the determination you can't fire them so you just take their funding away. That's what happened. And now we're sitting at this spot now and it's his fault. He's responsible for it. And that money's been squandered out. They still have a budget for 850 officers.
Corey O'Connor:
Where he's coming up with this I honestly have no idea. We've invested in our officers. We always have. We are invested in community policing. We aren't invested in whatever plan he's talking about, but for us, we've never defunded our officers or our police department. That has never occurred in the city of Pittsburgh.
Ken Rice:
Thank you. We're going to actually stay a little bit on this topic. Mr. O'Connor, you just mentioned hiring a chief of police. The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police has gone nearly one year without a police chief. If elected mayor, where does selecting a chief of police land in your list of priorities? What qualities do you want to see in the next chief? And when should we expect your pick to be in?
Corey O'Connor:
That is the number one priority. You want to make sure that people know that the next mayor is dedicated to hiring a full-time chief of police. If elected November 4th, we want to do a quick process where we are interviewing people. We are not going to spend taxpayers money on a national search. We want people that understand this community, understand all of our neighborhoods so that whomever he or she is as our next chief can get to work right away because it will build morale in our officers. Hopefully keep some of them retained so that they want to work in our police force. That is a number one priority for the next mayor. And if elected November 4th, I will already start interviewing the following week and be prepared to make that announcement before even being sworn in.
Ken Rice:
Mr. Moreno, Mr. O'Connor says, go back and look at my record. He's got 11 years that will show his votes. And his votes are exactly that. They voted to take $10 million a year out of the police training fund. Meaning, we can't train police officers in the academy. We can't train police officers in mental health training. Their co-response has been available since 2012. I know because that's what I did. I was part of that. I was part of that mental health training. What they do now is insufficient. They put a social worker in a police car with a uniform police officer and it's detrimental to both and it's detrimental to the police there. Go back and look at Mr. O'Connor's record. It's in public source. That's exactly what they did was take the money that the police needed to train its officers to be a professional unit and he put it in stop the violence fund that is not stopping any violence. People are being murdered on the street. There's no accountability to it and his record shows it.
Ken Rice:
Mr. Moreno, the question is really about what are your qualifications for the next police chief? What do you want that chief to do?
Tony Moreno:
I'm the only one here that's experienced enough to pick a chief of police that is going to keep order, accountability, and transparency. I have the ability to go in and look at somebody's resume before they were promoted. And that's the important thing. What did you do? How did you act before you became a boss, before you were picked to do something special? I will go in and bring somebody that's community oriented that is mental health first because that's the biggest problem we have in the city of Pittsburgh right now and we have to deal with that.
Corey O'Connor:
Look at my record. We did not defund any of these organizations that he's talking about. If you want to talk about investing in police force, when I was there, we actually got a location for a possible new training facility from the federal government for $1. So, we are investing in the future. We have to invest in our officers. As I mentioned, I'll be ready to make that decision immediately because we can't waste time. And I think that's the difference in this election. Who's ready to go in day one and start turning this city around? And it's not somebody that's going to go back and talk falsely on somebody else's record.
Tony Moreno:
Just a very quick rebuttal. It's the record. It's the voting record. It says it very clearly that this money was removed taken. It's not matching money. It's taken from the police training budget intentionally to lower the number of police officers. If you look at what they're doing right now, the city of Pittsburgh has offered the city police a pay cut. They didn't offer them a pay raise. 3% a year for the next three years and then an 11% raise in healthcare. They're asking them to Okay. Thank you very much for giving me a pay cut of 2% to stay here.
Ken Rice:
Gentlemen, in our primary debates here last spring, we talked about how other cities have done what Pittsburgh can't seem to do. Get their big nonprofits to make voluntary payments to the city. We asked, "Have you studied what's worked elsewhere?" Mr. Moreno, you said you didn't need to look at anybody else's plan. Now, Baltimore brings in $6 million a year from its nonprofits. Providence 11 million. Boston more than $35 million. So why not look at anyone else's plan? See what's worked and see if you can apply it here because we have a plan here. It's called St. Margaret's. You go over to St. Margaret's, over next to Waterworks Mall. That hospital sits on city property. City of Pittsburgh owns Waterworks, but that property stretches out to Duncan where St. Margaret's fits. When I talked to Michael Lamb about the budget the last time I ran, it came up. There's one line item that says payment in lieu of taxes and it was about $460,000. And I asked him what that was and he said that's St. Margaret's. I said so the retired police detective has to come in and show you that there's already a model for taking back those funds that we spend in the city to take care of our properties and serve that unit. All we have to do is take how they formulated those numbers, spread it out across the city, and then you use that as leverage. That number is going to be so astronomical that we can now sit down and say, "Hey, we want you guys to give the city employees healthcare." And then we want you to make training facilities with those dollars and not just in the general fund.
Mr. O'Connor, as mayor, what leverage would you use to get the nonprofits to chip in? Would you lead an effort to perhaps put public pressure on our universities and hospitals to pay what some consider to be their fair share? Might you go as far as to withhold new building permits? What new strategy that other mayors haven't tried would you try? Perhaps inspired by what's worked in other cities.
Corey O'Connor:
If you look at the other cities, it's a cooperation agreement. And if you actually look at the past in Pittsburgh, we have been successful. We were successful under Mayor Tom Murphy who had the initial payment in lieu of taxes. Then you went on to Mayor Ravenstahl who went to a lawsuit, found no funding for that. Then Mayor Peduto sat down and had a onePGH plan which got over 100 plus million dollars. Current administration went back to court and we've lost every court case. In fact, the city residents have lost over $100,000 in tax revenue fighting that. You have to go with specific ask that meet their mission. For example, both of our large nonprofit hospitals, why are we not talking to them about purchasing ambulances for the city over a five 10-year agreement that fits within their mission? Their mission is to help save lives. So is our paramedics. Talk to them about what within their mission they could fund to save city taxpayers dollars so that we can invest those dollars not just in equipment, but then back in our communities so that we can invest in small businesses in our neighborhoods. That's what you would do. You would not go to lawsuits and things like that. I mean, we still have a current lawsuit, but what you would have to do is negotiate within their goals and their mission. It's not just the hospitals, universities as well. Your time is up, but I want to interrupt you with a quick follow-up. If you're going to negotiate from what position of leverage will you be negotiating?
Corey O'Connor:
Sorry to understand that. What you're negotiating is, you know, here's the property that you own. here's the people that work within the city of Pittsburgh and our cost to protect your employees as well. So you come up with that figure. You sit down with the larger nonprofits and there was a deal already. We know that Governor Shapiro came in, helped and had a major deal with one of our larger nonprofits and the current administration declined it. You know, when we talk about building a city of the future, it's all hands on deck to have that cooperation agreement from the state to the city to the county.
Tony Moreno:
A lot he doesn't understand. And one of them is he was on council for 10 years and did nothing about this. You know why they're not offering up this money like they did before? It's because it goes into the general fund and it gets squandered. They know that this government just steals money and spends it wherever they want. I am going to come in and directly show them where their money is going to be spent and it's going to be giving back to the community and it's going to train people to be here in the city of Pittsburgh. It's going to build jobs. It's going to make it so we can put people in houses from the city of Pittsburgh and bring those families back into the city.
Corey O'Connor:
Final word is he said, you know, go within their mission for specifically where their money is going to go. That's the agreement. That's how you talk to large corporations and nonprofit organizations about where their money is going to be spent so that Pittsburghers get a bigger bang for their buck.
Ken Rice:
Welcome back to KDKA's debate in the race for Pittsburgh mayor between Republican candidate Tony Moreno and Democratic candidate Corey O'Connor. The next question comes from John Delano and we begin with Mr. O'Connor.
John Delano:
Mr. O'Connor, last week, the governor and a number of local elected officials claimed initial success in their downtown revitalization project. But to many, downtown still seems dead. No longer the attraction it once was when we were kids. People cite shootings, stabbings, panhandling, homeless people, closed storefronts, high-priced parking, businesses moving out to the suburbs. The whole list. So, is this just a perception problem? What's the first thing you're going to do to make downtown Pittsburgh a place everyone wants to work, visit, or live in?
Corey O'Connor:
The number one thing to do is make it more vibrant. If you look at what other major cities have done, they've gone out and they've got even more money. Denver got $600 million to invest in storefronts, to invest in infrastructure, to invest in locating companies and businesses back downtown. We cannot renovate every single building for housing. Housing will obviously help in bringing more people down here, but we have to be more vibrant. We have to have a plan and a strategy to use those tools and that future revenue back into the Golden Triangle. For me, you have a lot of great anchors here already. Point Park University, something we don't see on TV or talk about enough. They added 500 students. They wanted to get to a thousand. Could you imagine if we added a thousand new students back downtown? We also have to make sure it's clean. And we have to make sure that it's safe. Obviously, that's an image problem that we have to get over. But making downtown more vibrant and a destination again is right within our grasp and we have a lot of young entrepreneurs who want those storefronts. That's where the city has to put their money in and encourage people to open storefronts downtown.
Tony Moreno:
The number one priority of a mayor is public safety and we need to keep downtown safe. They give us numbers that are skewed. They are not counting deaths by overdose as homicides. When somebody goes and they buy an illicit drug on the street, they expect to get what they're buying. This is just commerce. It happens. It might be illegal, but it happens. If you're buying a Xanax and it's sprayed with fentanyl and you're dead, nobody's investigating that and treating that as a homicide. We need to direct public safety downtown. We need to improve our police department and numbers because Mr. O'Connor defunded the police. In 2020, we couldn't train police officers. He took $10 million a year out of the budget so we couldn't train them. And now our police stations are closed at night. People are dying on our streets. They're laying on our planners. They spent $10 million on mental health issues and that didn't get shown on the streets. So we have to redirect all of those resources downtown to keep businesses staying and people coming to visit them.
Corey O'Connor:
You have to have a vision for it. As I laid out in my first comments, we have to have a vision of investing in downtown, in the triangle, in the heart of major intersections so that we make them more vibrant. We also know that AI is the next big wave in technology and in jobs. We can be the world leader in AI. We have to start looking at downtown completely differently where we streamline a lot of these companies and startups to be back downtown offering incentives, rehabbing buildings for those purposes so that we can grow a city.
Tony Moreno:
When we get safe, when you can walk through Pittsburgh like we were able to do in 2015 and have dinner in Market Square at 9:00 in the evening and not be accosted or fear for your life, people are going to start coming back. We're going to see that vibrance happen that he's talking about because people are safe. Businesses want to be here. They're not coming here because the permitting issue and licensing issue are too difficult to deal with. And it's not safe. Bring safety back. I'm going to put officers there that are community oriented and I'm going to make it easier for businesses to come here.
Lisa Smith:
Mr. Moreno, we're going to talk now about neighborhoods. And when it comes to Pittsburgh neighborhoods, all 90 neighborhoods are not created equally. Some neighborhoods see heavy investment while others see little to no investment. Some neighborhoods have higher median income levels while others have low median income levels. Some neighborhoods have high crime rates and then others have low crime rates. So if elected mayor, what will you do to make quality of life in all neighborhoods a priority?
Tony Moreno:
When I look at our neighborhoods, I see it as this is a family. This is our family. This is my family. As your mayor, I am going to look at it as a head of a household and how to deal with that. What do you do? You keep your family safe but if you have a lot of children, everybody understands that each one of your children has different personalities and different needs and that's what the neighborhoods are like. Some neighborhoods need safety. Some neighborhoods need traffic calming to protect their schools. Some neighborhoods are just fine and they're just asking for another day that they have their trash picked up for their recycling. If you treat each neighborhood for the needs that they desire and they have to have everything will come together. Right now we are separating neighborhoods. Everybody knows that Homewood gets treated differently than everywhere else. All this money is being squandered. They put forward hundreds of millions of dollars and it just goes away.
Corey O'Connor:
Yes, each and every neighborhood is unique and different. But for me, it's getting to the neighborhoods that haven't seen us in a long time. Over this summer, we've been doing listening sessions in a number of communities to find out what resources they need so that they can rebuild their own communities. Think about the 11,000 parcels that the city actually owns. If we had those shovel-ready for community organizations to start taking ownership to allow people to rebuild their own communities, investing again in main and main districts, the heart of every community is the business district. Let's invest in there. Let's invest in young entrepreneurs so that they can create their own wealth. You want to talk about home ownership as well? That's something that we know in a lot of our neighborhoods we haven't seen in years. And we know that home ownership is the path to generational wealth. And that's where you use the Housing Opportunity Fund. That's where you be aggressive and proactive in cleaning out sites and starting to allow communities and community organizations to rebuild their own communities.
Tony Moreno:
It's really difficult to sit here and listen to someone talk about the things that they want to do going forward when they were here for 10 years and had the opportunity to do that, to lead the charge to do that thing, to do all of these things. He had the chance. There was a hundred million dollars that have gone through the URA in the city of Pittsburgh. A hundred million. And we're still talking about the same issues. He's not talking about doing anything different. He's just readjusting how he is going to direct the things to end up in the same place. I am going to completely redo all of those things. Yeah. I'll use an example. When I was on council, Hazelwood Green and the entire Hazelwood community at that time had nothing on that site. That steel mill site was vacant. We put $80 million into that site. We've now created new companies and new jobs. But we didn't just do that on that site. We built into the community. We rebuilt libraries. We rebuilt housing developments so that people can do rent-to-own programs. We created new storefronts so that individuals can start their own companies again. It's funny if you replay the tape, he said 2015 the city was great. Tony, just so you know, I was on council in 2015, but I don't get any credit for when the city was doing well. So now we have to start actually talking about serious issues and how we invest in those communities, not continue to blame or make up arguments from 30 years ago.
Lisa Smith:
Staying on the topic of neighborhoods, I want to ask you each for your single best idea for making Pittsburgh neighborhoods more attractive, more affordable for young families in particular. Young families who will contribute to the health of the city schools, who will contribute to the health of neighborhood business districts, who will patronize parks and create vibrancy that you both have talked about. Your single best idea, Mr. O'Connor, to make Pittsburgh neighborhoods a magnet for young families.
Corey O'Connor:
Great question. And for me, this is why I'm running. I have a three-year-old and a two-year-old. I believe that every family should be choosing Pittsburgh first, and that's investing in our communities. We've already talked about the small business districts and housing, but also look at our rec centers. When people want to gather in a community, especially with young families, they want to know that there's a safe place where they can go and that there's activities so they can meet their neighbors, meet their residents. We still operate our community centers like we did in the 1970s from 9:00 to 5:00. We have to start adjusting with the new world. For me, I believe that rec centers should be open from 7 am to 9:00 am in the mornings and then after school as well because we know now that probably both parents, mom and dad, are both working jobs. We need places for our kids to go and gather and invest in those community centers as well as their parks and connectivity. It's all about getting people around their neighborhoods and exploring and feeling safe and want to be in Pittsburgh to raise their families.
Tony Moreno:
They're nice and we should have them. But first, I want to make sure that we understand where this money is going. $80 million down the green in Hazelwood did not fix the flooding problem that terrorizes that neighborhood every time it rains. It is so dangerous and he had an opportunity to do that and he didn't. That will be one of the first things I do is direct that money towards that problem that started with that new bridge. But our neighborhoods right now, that's another problem we have. They've moved $10 million a year through this parks tax, but we're not seeing $10 million a year being spent in our parks tax. You know, our community centers are fall under that. They can do that right now. They could have done it way back before and they didn't. He has had the opportunity to do this and he hasn't done it and now he wants to come in and say he's going to, I am going to come in, show everybody where your money is being spent and directed to those things that are necessary. Do we need a community center in Riverview Park first or do we need to fix the road that's falling off the side of the hill? I think we need to fix the road first. We'll get to the community centers when everything else is settled.
Corey O'Connor:
It's about how we gather young families. That's the question. And if he wants to talk about flooding, well, when I left city council, there was $20 million for that flooding project to be taken care of. Can't tell you what happened to that. But if you want to talk about families, they want places to go. That's how you interact. That's how you grow families in Pittsburgh. My wife and I walk our kids in almost every neighborhood every weekend. We take the kids out to see various places, to different parks, to different playgrounds. That's how you grow our region. We have to talk about making Pittsburgh a family first approach.
Tony Moreno:
Bringing jobs here is important for families. Making it affordable to live here is important for families. Bringing our education system up is important for families. But the most important thing for families is safety. What do people look at when they go to move to a completely new area? They look at the crime rate and they look at how the schools are functioning and we are failing in both and our government has left us down. They have abandoned us. They are stealing our money and we're left to suffer on the streets.
Lisa Smith:
Time now for another quick break. We'll be right back.
John Delano:
We continue now with KDKA's Pittsburgh mayoral debate. Mr. Moreno, we'll start with you. In this city of eds and meds, Pittsburgh is facing significant challenges under the Trump administration. KDKA's lead investigator Andy Sheen reports that CMU and PIT alone could lose up to $200 million in research grants while the president's immigration policies are cutting the number of international students who make up 10% of Pitt and 40% of CMU. Now, do you support these administration policies? And what role will you play as mayor in maintaining Pittsburgh as an eds and meds city?
Tony Moreno:
I don't know exactly what the matrix is for that reduction. So I can't speak to it. That's the federal government. I'm going to be the mayor of Pittsburgh. I need to make sure that we take care of what's going on here. We need to take the money we have available and take care of ourselves. This is what we're seeing happening. They have created all these revenue streams for things that are not important to the people in our neighborhoods that gets taken away by a new administration and all of a sudden we're underwater. We need to take care of ourselves first and that's going to come from bringing manufacturing and taking what we have available to us and building on it. AI is coming. Responsible AI is going to be our future right here. We're set up for it right here in the city of Pittsburgh. We bring these data centers in, we build them right here. Not only does that help fund and increase our eds and meds, but now it gets people working at these centers. We could train our own community.
Corey O'Connor:
The federal cuts are going to be crippling to a lot of our communities, especially the universities. Those are jobs that we are talking about for the future. Those are research jobs. Those are jobs that have created neighborhoods, that have invested in our neighborhoods, that have brought new families back to Pittsburgh. You talk about AI and how that's a new wave. If a lot of those research grants are cut, that's going to impact our ability to be a worldwide leader in eds and meds, especially when you're talking about research and research grants that go on at our universities. So, for me, your voice of the city of Pittsburgh, you're the mayor. You stand up and you fight and you make that argument why these cuts are going to impact my city and that's what you have to do as the leader of this city.
Tony Moreno:
I it just goes back to we need to take care of ourselves first. We won't have to worry about what these people are doing with cuts and why they're cutting them. If we are secure and we have our foundation laid out, we won't have to deal with that on that end. We can come in and say what's necessary for our communities in these cuts that we need to keep some of these things that are successful and if you prove those successes we'll be able to sustain the way that we're living.
Corey O'Connor:
Yeah, these cuts, this isn't just happening in Pittsburgh. This is happening in every major city across the country with the same federal administration policies. It's wrong. It's going to impact us long term. But we can't just sit around and wait. We have to prepare for the future now. This means we have to continue to diversify our economy beyond just eds and meds to include AI, technology, advanced manufacturing, so that we don't become overly reliant on any one sector. As mayor, I will be a fierce advocate fighting to restore and increase research funding and attracting new companies to Pittsburgh so that we can build a strong future for our residents.
Ken Rice:
Thank you, Mr. O'Connor and Mr. Moreno. That concludes our Pittsburgh mayoral debate. We appreciate you joining us tonight and hearing directly from these candidates on issues important to our city. Thank you for watching KDKA TV.
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