Pittsburgh City Council voted to pass a $785 million budget for 2025 Tuesday morning, despite ongoing concerns that some of its numbers — in particular, its projections for police overtime — are unrealistic.
The vote was nearly unanimous, with 8 members of council voting in favor, and only Theresa Kail-Smith opposed.
There was little debate around the table prior to the vote, despite the fact that in a letter sent to council on Monday, City Controller Rachael Heisler warned of “substantial gaps in the budget allocations for Public Safety and Public Works overtime, which necessitates immediate attention.”
Heisler noted that the 2025 budget anticipates spending less on overtime in those departments than it has already spent this year. The plan anticipates spending $15 million for police overtime in 2025, for example, though it has already spent $18.6 million this year. There are similar gaps in the budget projections for the Bureau of Fire, Emergency Medical Services, and Public Works.
In all, Heisler says, the combined shortfall could be as high as $18 million, although her letter also envisions more optimistic scenarios in which the city maximizes efficiencies and hiring to keep overtime costs on budget.
Kail-Smith said while Heisler's letter alarmed her, it "came less than 24 hours before a final vote," and "I wasn't certain what the request was.
"I didn't have time to make sure that council got all the information that we needed.," she added. "We didn't know whether we were putting ourselves in any kind of liability" by not budgeting enough for public safety. And while she praised her colleagues for their work on the budget, "I just felt uncomfortable" supporting it.
Concerns about the overtime costs are not new: City Council member Erika Strassburger, who heads council’s law and finance committee, has been raising similar doubts since the fall, and other council members have echoed them. Mayor Ed Gainey’s office says the city hopes to use more civilians in the department, freeing up officers to patrol the streets, and recruit more officers. A spokesperson for Mayor Ed Gainey said Monday that Heisler’s letter “is nothing that we have not addressed before … during the budget hearings.”
In the scope of the overall budget the numbers are not large: Even Heisler’s worst-case scenario would amount to less than 3% of the operating budget that covers day-to-day costs. And council members who spoke to WESA Monday — including some who share Heisler’s concerns — said they expected the budget to be approved.
“I think it’s ready to pass,” said Strassburger Monday evening, even if “there are some people who vote no or take votes to abstain.”
Strassburger said that while “I agree with the substance of the letter,” the plan for 2025 itself is reasonable. Numerous other factors could erase such costs or magnify them, she said, and if overtime costs trend above estimates, “we will work through it by making judgments through the year. We will find the money to make the payments.”
Strassburger said the real concerns are about the longer-term picture, as the plan envisions the city spending down its savings account during the next several years to balance the books. Still, she said, that is a bigger picture issue that requires more discussion.
“There's not much we can do before tomorrow's vote except acknowledge that,” she said. “There isn't a lot we could tinker with for next year.”
Others were more upbeat.
“I just think that overall, we've done a really good job," Councilor Barb Warwick told WESA after the vote. She noted that the city faces a number of challenges going forward: the end of federal COVID aid, a long-expected boost in debt payments for the next few budget cycles and a lack of direct financial support from large tax-exempt non-profits. In the fact of all that, she said, the city had "a budget that is going to get Pittsburgh through two very lean years coming up ahead.”
After the vote, Strassburger herself said the budget is "far from perfect" and said much of the debate focused on city salaries and infrastructure while other needs — like the ambulances and other vehicles driven by city workers — suffers from ongoing neglect.
“This feels like the next generation of deferred maintenance,”
she said. Still, she added, “I think we passed the best possible budget with the funds that we have,” she said. “It's always a hard decision. There are always tradeoffs.”
Deliberations about the budget this fall have proceeded with little rancor: Council made only minor changes in a series of line-item budget votes last week, even as critics such as newly minted mayoral candidate Corey O’Connor warned that the city is “sleepwalking” into state financial oversight.
Opposing a budget is not an easy call, even for legislators who have reservations about it. Voting “no” means rejecting a spending plan that may include components a council member likes, and may even have fought to include. Demanding that allocations be increased entails finding ways to pay for them — an especially difficult task at the end of the process. The city must have its budget in place by the end of the year.
Heisler herself has been relatively quiet in recent weeks after raising red flags and warning about red ink earlier this year. On Monday, she acknowledged that her letter came late in the process, but she said she felt obliged to send it “given the lack of robust debate” during the budget process.
“There is no way this budget is accurate for the most vital city services that this city provides,” she said, “and I just don’t think that public safety should be the thing we should underaccount for.”
City Council member Bob Charland, a frequent Gainey critic, says he’s “deeply concerned” by the amount set aside for overtime and salary in the budget, though as of Monday afternoon he said he hadn’t decided how he would vote.
Anthony Coghill, another Gainey critic, said he wasn’t sure how he would vote, either. Many of the budget decisions he found most objectionable, he said, are things that he expressed doubts about at the time but would be hard-pressed to undo now, such as the city’s use of federal COVID aid.
“I think it will pass,” he said, “because there is only so much we can do."
Charland and Coghill themselves ultimately voted in favor of the budget on Tuesday — despite the doubts they expressed the day before.
Julia Maruca contributed to this story.
