A collection of bills introduced by City Councilor Theresa Kail-Smith on Tuesday would significantly reorganize city departments and policies related to development, zoning and permitting — moves Kail-Smith said would “streamline” the permitting process and accelerate development.
“We want to see things moving along in a better way than they have been,” she told WESA shortly after the measures were introduced in council Tuesday morning.
The bills would turn the Department of City Planning and the Division of Design Review into a new Department of City Development, and create a five-member City Development Commission, which would replace the current nine-member Planning Commission. The City Development commissioners would serve five-year terms, while Planning commissioners currently serve six-year terms.
Other legislation introduced by Kail-Smith would speed up permitting application responses, and require zoning officials to tell applicants within 30 days if their application is incomplete, so that they can fix their application.
“All we've heard from developers, and people that are trying to even replace slats in fences — the processes that we have that are so long and so costly,” Kail-Smith said. “I think that we're trying to make sure that we are getting jobs here in Pittsburgh, housing here in Pittsburgh… We don't want to be the hindrance to those things, we want to be a partner and ally in those things.”
The proposals also include returning building inspections to the city’s Department of Public Safety, where they were housed prior to the administration of former Mayor Bill Peduto. The legislation would also create a Department of Public Health under that department, to address public health as it relates to structures.
Kail-Smith said she sees the bills as the start of a larger initiative of merging other city departments, though she has yet to put those ideas into legislation.
The move comes as city government moves into a sort of limbo, as Mayor Ed Gainey’s defeat in last month’s Democratic Primary leaves him as a lame duck, while the primary’s winner Corey O’Connor won’t start the job until next year, assuming he wins in the general election this fall.
Kail-Smith herself plans to retire at the end of the year, and said that leant some urgency to her efforts. She said that while she is not trying to change “everything tonight and overnight … I'm not going to wait forever either. These are some things I want to do before I leave.
“I'm trying to put in place a process so that when people come in, they can hit the ground running and can start getting some development moving, start getting [affordable housing] built, different things that we want to see happen,” she said.
She said she had not spoken to O’Connor about the legislation, but said some of its provisions align with O’Connor’s ideas, and she hoped to talk with him further about it.
O’Connor’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment by press time. But he campaigned on a pro-growth platform that included a focus on streamlining permitting and other processes to make it easier for developers to build.
“I think Corey O'Connor's interested in doing things with development,” Kail-Smith said. “He may get in here and decide that he wants nothing to do with what I've done.” O’Connor’s challenge to Gainey was endorsed by five members of council, and Kail-Smith said that if he wanted to undo her initiative, he would likely be able to do so.
Still, she said, “I'll know I left this place in a way that they at least have a path forward of working more collaboratively with council, and more expeditiously.”
In the near term, however, Kail-Smith’s legislation might well require 6 votes to override a veto by Gainey, should he oppose it. (If no action is taken this year, the legislation would have to be reintroduced by a new council next year.) And the bills she offered Tuesday appear to have caught him by surprise.
Kail-Smith said she mentioned her intent to propose some of the bills in a conversation with Deputy Mayor Jake Pawlak, and that she intends to talk with him and others moving forward. But Olga George, a spokesperson for Gainey’s office, said the administration “neither provided input on Councilwoman Kail-Smith’s … legislation nor did we receive the details or draft texts until their public release today.”
George said that because they would alter city government units, the proposals activate a part of the city’s home rule charter that requires Gainey to provide a formal written recommendation to Council within 30 days before Council can move forward.
She also said the administration wants to see more details on the zoning-specific changes and hear what their intended outcomes are.
The proposals, she said, “may inadvertently complicate the application process for both the City and applicants, potentially countering the sponsor's objectives.”
