PowerPoint Time: Mayor Ravenstahl's Counter-Offer to State Leaders

As is our custom, sometimes we reproduce these for our audiences. This one contains 12 slides.

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl delivered the following in Council chambers to a room full of engaged citizens, which included many city workers and union leaders. The special meeting was called in rapid response to the progress of a state bill which would significantly and permanently affect the city's budget as a whole, not to mention city pensioners.

After he made this presentation, Council President Doug Shields and City Controller Michael Lamb sat down next the Mayor. Together all three attested to the gravity of the situation and plead for unity in the days and weeks ahead.

Then there was a discussion.

SLIDE 1:

A sensitive poetry by Luke Ravenstahl.

SLIDE 2:

This might be the most important slide right here. This was originally a bill for Philly's sales tax and Philly bookkeeping. A couple of weeks later, a statewide pensions plan of which Our Mayor was only very recently informed was stapled onto the Philadelphia measure.

This bill did not really take its trip to the sausage factory. This is raw pig.


SLIDE 3:



In which the state says, "If you're only flat broke, we'll solve all your problems while letting you run most everything and keep most everything -- but if you're dead broke, we ride through town and do as we please, assuming you don't speak the language."

SLIDE 4:

Well. This is where the accusations of "predatory lending" style behavior come in. House Bill 1828 is far from predatory lending, but it seems to steer the City of Pittsburgh to jump onto this plan by means of making the here and now look tempting, at the significant expense of down the road. I just think that speaks a little to how this whole thing was envisaged.

It is also true that our workforce has been making some sacrifices. Act 47 has been no picnic.

SLIDE 5:

I think that the thing to take away from Slide #5 is that the City has actually been at work on this. Maybe not so much with Harrisburg (though it seems like at least some in Harrisburg may not have wanted to alert Level III Cities as to what has been going on) but among ourselves, we've been shockingly mindful. Say what you want, Lukey has not pulled a Murphy or a Masloff on our municipal pensions yet.

Can the Ravenstahl Plan work by itself? Can any parts of it be worked in to the state plan as it exists so far? Will there emerge any semblance of a third way for Pittsburgh, a way that is not totally our own yet at the same time has not sprung up out of the swamp like some kind of alien?

The next three slides go together. They describe the one-two punch!

SLIDES 6, 7, and 8:

One! Two!

Next came some bottom-line comparisons and political arguments.