Belief Precedes Experience

City Council Public Comments
December 12, 2018

On August 24 and October 3, I came here and expressed the sentiment: Peduto must resign. Let's end the crookery at city hall. Those public comments are on the website OaklandDignity.com, Link 82 and SavePantherHollow.com. I echo that same sentiment today.

Belief precedes experience. The mayor holds on to the faulty, destructive belief that a roadway from Hazelwood Green to Pitt and CMU is needed to develop that site. He initiated; city council shamefully approved $1.3 million for engineering design work; and the budget presented today will set aside $10.5 million for its construction. It is not hyperbole to say the roadway would destroy the Four Mile Run and Panther Hollow neighborhoods.

Our communities thank Bob Bauder of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review for his November 27 article that shined a light into the opaqueness of city government. In that article, the mayor alluded to the fact that Pitt and CMU have little room to grow in Oakland. That's a savvy, political way of saying these universities have already legally raped the land of Oakland for their self-interests. They have taken ownership of over 110 buildings and properties in our small community, but their insatiable greed continues.

The mayor went on to say that the roadway's impact would be "minimal". He is ignorant of the history of Oakland and is deceiving the people of Pittsburgh. When Pitt left the North side to come to Oakland in 1908, my grandparents' generation also thought the impact would also be minimal, never imagining the massive destruction the university would inflict on their community. Oakland has lost more than 80% of its residential population since my grandparents' and parents' generations.

The business district has been virtually destroyed and replaced with student housing, dormitories, and university-owned buildings. Today, there are no supermarkets, movie theatres, bowling alleys, hardware stores, shoe stores and shoe repair shops, high fashion men and women's clothing stores, dry cleaners, alteration shops, bakeries, novelties and gift stores, and children's toys and clothes stores. That destruction by Oakland's universities is an immense tragedy that killed the hopes and dreams of a wonderful community.

The city of Pittsburgh offered Amazon more financial incentives than any other American city in its attempt to be home to Amazon's second headquarters, yet Jeff Bezos did not choose Pittsburgh. Was he aware of the crookery at city hall, and did not want to partner with a city government that destroys neighborhoods for economic gain? Was the forged document in the mayor's application just one of many other illegalities in the application process?

We suggest city and university staff to report any known wrongdoing to U.S. Attorney Scott Brady at (412) 644-3500. Crookery has no place in our city government and universities.

Carlino Giampolo