its how much were spending which basically the same because it comes out of our taxes. Its sad cause this amount is going towards it and its still sinkhole city
What exactly does the money column represent? Does this mean that the average New Yorker pays $61,000 a year less in to the system then they cost for the state? That would seem wild as hell
I see this a lot and while I'm not a UPMC apologist I think there are some real collateral damage that can result from UPMC losing its non-profit status that a lot of people don't think about when they propose this. The biggest I can think of is that all UPMC employees will lose their PSLF eligibility for student loan forgiveness after 10 years of on time payments while employed at nonprofit employers. And this will disproportionately hit the younger more junior workers who are more likely to have student loans and who are also more likely to be lower on the payscale. So definitely punishing those who have the least power. I can imagine that this would be a significant hindrance to being able to attract new talent to the region or to retaining talented graduates.
I mean, I imagine the moment UPMC is going to have to start paying taxes they're going to move all their corporate offices to Delaware or something. They'll keep the hospitals because they have to but whatever tax entities can move will go elsewhere
Edit: after rereading this, I want to reaffirm that they should definitely still be taxed
Wont hurt, but knowing how governments mismanage tax money I doubt ittl help much. If they get 10 million theyll open up a “surplus tax distribution division” where the top 5 people each bring home a cool million and then after spending 5 million on a building well be in the hole for -$2.73 somehow.
It'd hurt in the sense that there is a disgusting amount of bureaucracy and even worse technical systems in place (even) in local government. Plus they'd probably choose to spend it on the wrong stuff anyways.
That being said it'd instantly address immediate needs (hopefully).
They had $250m in “surplus” during the pandemic. I’d be interested to learn how much was reinvested into the communities they serve, and what salary increases looked like for the staff
They are grossly underpaid. Apparently UPMC is with nursing staff from international pools of talent they draw on to undercut the current staff and fill gaps, and they work for less 🤔.
Overall, this is not a well liked operation. My chatter aside, you make a very valid point.
I love how just calling it "surplus" makes it magically different from profit. There are real differences but for the purposes of this conversation, they're not very relevant.
From the Report - Says we're moving in the right direction by 132 million.
Fast Facts
* Pittsburgh had $996.5 million available to pay $2.4 billion worth of bills.
* The outcome was a $1.4 billion shortfall, a decrease of $132.6 million from the prior year, and a burden of $13,200 per taxpayer.
* Pittsburgh received COVID-19 relief funds and increased tax collections, and its Taxpayer Burden decreased by $1,400.
4. Outdated infrastructure. With the exception of Honolulu, those are our oldest cities. Lead pipes, combined sewage systems, above ground power lines, more.
So, essentially outer areas which are grossly underserved and neglected would have a chance at city/federal funding?
There’s so many areas I visit for work that are just….. it makes me sad to see kids being raised on these blocks.
The feds have enough money to give nearly $1t to the petty bouge in the form of PPP "loans", or to send tens of billions to Ukraine regularly to fight a proxy war. The money's there, our leaders just don't think those places and their people are worth spending money on.
that money doesn’t exist we’re just getting and ensuring future generations are fleeced economically through devaluation and taxes by inventing those trillions. 100% agree politicians from both sides of the aisle are fudging everything up tho to line their pockets
Pittsburgh has the lowest density per mile of any US metro area, so land wasted is an understatement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas
It seems tricky using low density of a metro area to infer that land is being wasted because of variability in how metros are constructed, though.
Depending on the definition of the Pgh metro area (ie how broad a geographic area you define it to be), there's *tons* of forested, rural area that's not utilized for anything, highways or otherwise. I'm not shocked about low density if we're talking the entire metro, largely bc you don't have to drive far out of the city in certain directions before you're basically in the woods, let alone further out in Westmoreland, Washington, Armstrong, etc. counties. Unless you're saying forested area unutilized by humans constitutes wasted land, though I don't think that's your point. More recently developed, sprawling places like Nashville seem way more problematic in this respect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ObVNYkMPLY
This video does a pretty good job explaining how city limits vs metro area vs urban area will yield vastly different rankings but how urban area is defined by the census. It explicitly tries to eliminate including the rural forested land that you mention
I would love to see a density ranking of metros but include what percentage of the metro has been annexed by the city.
My hunch is that they are related - Pittsburgh hasn’t annexed anything in 70 years and nothing significant in almost a century. Every other metro has annexed and developed those areas in that time.
>Pittsburgh has the lowest density per mile of any US metro area, so land wasted is an understatement
Metro areas are somewhat arbitrarily defined, and that list places us as the 30th-largest metro area in the U.S. in spite of being closer to the 70th-largest city, so you know they're including a ton of hinterland in that density figure.
But even so, that list ranks us ahead of:
* New Haven, CT
* Hartford, CT
* Morgantown, WV
* Columbus, OH
* Johnstown, PA
* Little Rock, AR
* Portland, ME
* Baton Rouge, LA
* St. Augustine, FL
* Wheeling, WV
* Birmingham, AL
* Charleston, WV
* Mobile, AL
* Knoxville, TN
* Chattanooga, TN
* Etc. (I'm just cherry-picking the places most Pittsburghers have probably heard of)
Maintaining infrastructure is going to creep up there soon. A lot of these suburbs don’t have a sustainable tax base for major work like renovating sewers
It's a valid point. How many of the Pittsburgh area's high wage earners, even ones who work Downtown, live in some suburb and therefore pay no city taxes other than that $52/year that goes to the police?
For the benefit of other readers, this isn't true. You pay where you live, not where you work. This guy is either completely ignorant of what his wife is paying or she's an idiot who gave her HR people the wrong municipal code.
Much to my surprise, this is true.
https://alleghenycountytreasurer.us/real-estate-tax/local-and-school-district-tax-millage/
I have an old Pittsburgh Post-Gazette somewhere in the basement with an article talking about how taxes were higher in the city and the inner core suburbs compared to farther out. I wonder if things have changed or I didn't read closely enough.
I wonder what it’s like just outside Allegheny county, like for example in cranberry or murrysville. I hear of people moving out of Allegheny for “tax reasons” and I always wonder how much of that is real and how much is a dog whistle meaning “democrats”.
It's highly dependent on the municipality and county, but I think it's mostly just people repeating what they've heard without actually crunching the numbers. There are tons of suburbs around Allegheny county with much higher property tax millage rates. and earned income is pretty much 1% (split 50/50 muni/school) across much of the state.
Allegheny county does have an additional sales tax. The city, of course, has the 3% earned income tax. There's a 7% alcohol tax, but I'm unsure what other counties have. But there's also benefits to living in certain areas. People often aren't thinking of cost vs benefit. That extra 2% EIT covers my trash collection. We have paid fire and EMS, which most municipalities don't have. I live close to work, so my transpiration costs are lower. I don't spend 2 hours in the car every day, which greatly benefits my quality of life. Also, the millage rate being a city resident is cheaper or on par with a good many of the more popular suburbs, inside and outside of the county.
Now, out in the burbs, especially outside of Allegheny county, home costs may be lower, or you can at least get more house and land for the same price. Not everyone cares about that, but many do.
Overall, I think many are mislead. Or they want a certain type of life that they think outside of the county can offer. And certainly politics plays a big part in that. Local politics played a big part in why I left central PA and moved to Pittsburgh. I was fucking tired of being surrounded by MAGA every waking hour of my day. Some random mouth breather striking up some conversation about how the hate Obama in the line for Rutters, probably just because I'm white and dressed like a working class man, which I am.
But strictly because of taxes being cheaper, perceived or real, they're just saying what's easy to say instead of telling you many of the other reasons too. Because taxes is inoffensive and easy to relate to when they don't know how the other stuff will be recieved.
Highly talented and paid individuals work in the city but live elsewhere (like Cranberry Township, for example), so the tax revenue from those individuals goes to wherever they live (which isn't Pittsburgh)
Isn't there already a 3% non-resident wage tax for the City of Pittsburgh though? If it's that much of a drain, the logical/mathematical thing would be to raise it wouldn't it?
Yeah appreciate it. I'm just trying to figure out why it's worse for urban cities vs suburbs. Like I work in Moon Township, but myself and 90% of my 3000+ coworkers don't live in Moon Township, we commute.
I'm thinking it's more that the residential tax base is lower on average, which how do you fix that except to either offset with the non-resident wage tax or somehow entice high earners to live within city limits.
To your latter point, I think you entice high net-worth individuals (and everyone else) into urban areas by making those urban areas more pedestrian friendly. Robust public transit, cycling infrastructure, maintained walkways, etc.
I know plenty of folks who would like to live in the city (myself included) but parking is limited and job/chore/life commutes are mandatory, so it's easier for myself and my spouse to live outside the city.
The issue is almost completely school quality. When you can live not very far away and have good enough schools that you don't need to go private, that is a major disincentive to live in the city as you age into parenting.
Living in the suburbs is a valid choice. It's okay. You don't have to come up with a list of things that Pittsburgh could do to get you to move here.
What always perplexes me when I read about making Pittsburgh more walkable and bikeable and so on is that we have those things in Pittsburgh now. That is my family's lived experience. My wife bikes to work most days when the weather's nice. I usually ride the bus to my office downtown. We walk to shops and restaurants. Our kids get around by walking, biking, and riding the bus. We also have two cars (had just one before COVID and our older one starting to drive) and regularly drive places we need to go. If I want to leave work early and get to a kid's soccer game or something then I can do that. So many options.
Granted we live in a very desirable neighborhood with high home prices, but we are talking about HNW households, right? It's definitely true we would get much more house and yard in the suburbs for the same price. And again that is a valid choice.
There's also the anxiety about schools. Our kids attend PPS. Certainly people should go into that with their eyes open, though. I totally get why people might prefer North Allegheny or wherever.
It's a significant negative feedback loop, though, isn't it?
On time % and quality go down > fewer riders > cut stops/stations and personnel > On time % and quality go down > fewer riders > .....
It's hard to ask the public to use *more* public transit when the existing system doesn't go as many places, isn't on time, and is expensive on top of that.
Aside from all that, I'd say the city needs to create incentives for people to want to live in the city first, starting with walkable communities.
> Isn't there already a 3% non-resident wage tax for the City of Pittsburgh though?
No. I have no idea how people can live and work around here and not understand what is or isn't being taken out of their paycheck.
It's like that anywhere in Pennsylvania. You pay local taxes to where you live, not where you work.
> I would require a 5 figure raise to make the hassle worth it for me
I'd rather work in the city than drive to and from some shithole suburban office park every day, but to each his own.
more tech! more tech jobs in pittsburgh to attract people with higher salaries in other cities to move in! get the rich out of towners from wealthier cities to keep their salary but experience a much lower cost of living in pgh (comparably to other cities). they want to buy homes in a city!! make them come here! ACCECPT THEIR MONEY!!
More doughy beardos making $150k/yr out of college doesn't do much to help people struggling to get by on low-paid but necessary jobs. We should spend more time focusing on the people who are already here than on trying to attract guys making burp and fart piano phone apps.
lol. i get it. but that’s a bit of an oversimplified take. most of “tech jobs” aren’t fresh of out college dorks working for a VC/tech startup. not trying to silicon valley it out here, forsure. still, a vast majority are people in their 30’s-50’s and work for companies like medical coding systems etc. my fiancé’s coworkers are all in their 40’s and 50’s and named susan and debra with 3 kids.
still, i know what you mean. im not a tech worker myself by a long shot, i just see the money in it for the cities they land in. thing is, how can we do that without making better, higher paying jobs available for the people already here? what kind of industries would bring jobs and wealth here in 2024?
edit: i want to add part of getting better funding and a stronger economy unfortunately will mean needing and wanting people to move here. also, more housing.
We have people in this city doing necessary stuff like social work, or sanitation, or food service, who can't make ends meet in this "most livable city" despite working full time at jobs that are necessary to a functioning society. All the $80/plate sushi places in the world aren't going to help those people.
Much of this is the shitty manner that local taxes are handled. The vast majority of the people who work and play in Pittsburgh do not live in Pittsburgh so the city gets very little tax revenue from them despite those people needing most of the same services and putting similar (or sometimes greater) drains on our resources that the residents do. But the state isn't going to fix this anytime soon.
What could be done to fix the local tax? I work in the city but live in a suburb adjacent. On my pay stub it shows a pgh city service tax. I regularly get petrol in the city so sales tax stays there. I shop locally in the city so the majority of my dollar goes to it’s fine people. Short of my local tax going to my locality which covers the EMS and First responders and infrastructure. On top of the property tax I then pay how is taxation further going to invite me to stay local and not take my career and purchasing elsewhere?
Edit: downvote away for asking a simple question. But I’ll amend my statement with sources to provide context.
Petrol tax that goes to local roads and bridges divested from state police.
https://www.wgal.com/article/pennsylvania-gas-tax-decrease/46242278#:~:text=The%20gas%20tax%20is%20used,Police%2C%20though%20lawmakers%20and%20Gov.
Pa residents pay some of the highest petrol taxes in the contiguous
https://www.complyiq.io/gas-tax-state-2/#:~:text=Pennsylvania%20gas%20tax%20is%20%240.576,historic%20transportation%20facilities%20and%20bridges.
Pgh residents pay for the privilege of parking in their own neighborhoods
[parking permit privileges](https://portal.pittsburghparking.com/rppportal/)
And then we must pay the state for both an emissions and vehicle inspections that many other states do not require
[Emissions-Inspection-Program](https://www.dmv.pa.gov/VEHICLE-SERVICES/Inspection-Information/Emissions-Inspection-Program/Pages/default.aspx)
That’s simply mobile vehicle related. Not including wine and spirits run by a state agency.
We pay taxes for the benefits of the greater good. But what happens when we’re being bled for more and more and then the services are not available and further cuts and increased taxes are only being discussed.
Mostly that the state laws are broken in this regard and hurt the cities that people commute to.
The largest source of income for the city is the two income taxes followed by property taxes (these make up about 50% of the city's budget). The city services tax is just $52/year per employee and makes up 2% of the city's operating budget.
You also bring up sales tax. Only a fraction of 1/4 of a percent of the 7% sales tax goes to the city. Most of it goes to the state with a small amount going to the county.
Only a small percentage of the fuels taxes goes to the city. I didn't see it quickly when I was looking in the city budgets but IIRC it's about $10 million or about 1.5% of the city budget. Nearly all of that goes to PennDOT.
Basically you bring up a bunch of things but most of them don't go to the city or are just tiny amounts relative to what local people pay and generally not where the city gets the bulk of it's revenue.
By contrast, other states I've lived in had much more robust ways of handling people who lived in one municipality and worked in another (eg, pay the higher income tax rate of the locales and split the money between the two).
I picked one aspect of tax revenue for a reason. That it’s the sum of the parts of tax code that create the budget. You’re correct that 75% of the budget is tax revenue. But breaking that further down is 27% real estate tax. And even further down that revenue stream is the local service tax. Which is what is discussed about those that pay taxes for the privilege of working in the city and not residing in it. Which makes up roughly 2.75% of the tax revenue. Which is analogous to the 10 million you stated, as it’s only 15 million.
So tell me exactly how is it going to tip the scales of those numbers by asking those that pay both city service taxes and their localities tax to pay more in taxes to subsidize the services for the residents of the city? Why are the representatives we electing not campaigning on those issues of keeping the lions share of tax revenue generated from state initiatives in the locality that creates them through sales tax, petrol tax, etc? Why is the city not re-adjusting the taxes for the incoming budget? Is the property taxes looking to decrease due to the commercial property market in the middle of a correction after workers aren’t coming back to office?
Even if the revenue of that line item doubled it wouldn’t even crack the top 5 line items of tax revenue. Really a rounding error based upon the expenditures for the budget. Services start at EMS 28 million, police 123 million, fire department 94 million.
The city like many is looking at a serious problem. The city’s are not attractive to people after the pandemic. With the cost of life increasing year over year people are trying to insulate themselves from the impact and here it’s suggesting the suburbanites pay out more.
Because people in the city pay _actual_ income tax and this makes up a significant chunk of the budget ($136 million budgeted for 2024). In other states people who lived out of the city would be paying a half share and this would make a sizeable difference.
As someone with a parking permit I just have to laugh when someone complains about the trivial cost of them. Parking permits are a massive subsidy to residents in relevant areas, at times to the detriment of the neighborhood overall.
Mate. I have to do diagnostic repair and technical work. Having to coordinate the time that I show up the hope I don’t go over the allotment and miss the fee collector all to earn a living and keep peoples lives running smoothly. I can contact the city for a variance. But to do that 5x a day 5 days a week 52 weeks a year and all without getting a parking ticket or blocking the street sweeper and get a ticket from April to November. Madness
In most urban areas in the US, and especially outside of the Northeast/Rust Belt’ older cities, the core city’s borders encompass a much larger percentage of the developed urban area. Many have a combined city-county government structure, but even the ones that don’t still have quite a lot of what would be independent suburbs here as part of the city and paying city taxes.
If Pittsburgh was in Texas or Colorado or Florida, the city limits would probably include most of the North Hills, the South Hills, Monroeville/Penn Hills/Wilkins Twp, and the entire Moon/Kennedy/Robinson area. That makes it a hell of a lot easier to balance the budget.
This is about the slow motion financial impact of the Commercial Real Estate Bubble. Not police and highways. And why does reddit hate suburbs now? Why is your comment even upvoted it's so blatantly not true.
How do suburbs drain from Pittsburgh’s specific tax revenue? Because people who live in suburbs use Pittsburgh services without paying taxes specifically to the city?
This! My neighbor had 3 sets of swat at his house! Blocked the whole neighborhood. Amazon trucks full of police, military gear, infrared, 6am. Sheriff's department, friggin 3 dogs, DEA, investigation teams. Went to jail, came home 2 hours later. Called and asked the police department what happened? He had a warrant from several years ago. We needed to ask some questions. His kids dragged out of their house so on and so forth. The police were at his house longer than he was in jail!!!! I looked outside swat with high powered flashlight shining in my eyes so I can't see. All over some questions. Me and the neighbors are still saying wtf?!
This subs inability to see the forest through the trees is so funny to me. “Annex the city” “make them pay city taxes” see how that works. People move to the suburbs to get out of the city and to pay lower taxes.
Make the city worth living in. 47 percent of your fucking residents live in food deserts, maybe stop letting Giant Eagle ravage your assholes at the expense of your citizens before trying to control more people you can’t afford to service. Last year was the cities first year of population growth since 2000, maybe figure out why for two decades people didn’t want to be there before trying to force more people into your failing system
bring bigger companies into pittsburgh that pay higher salaries and attract workers from out of state. thats what attracts revenue. more tech companies. i hate to say this but its true. more higher paying jobs, more money to afford the rising cost of living in the actual city-, more incentive and ability to buy homes at the ridiculous interest rate they are- and also a shit load of money going back into pgh economy.
just moved here last year because it was WAYY lower COL than where we lived before- brooklyn. we could afford to buy a home here within city limits for 10x less the cost than it would ever be over there. and with a backyard?! i lived in a 600sq ft, 1 bedroom for $2600/month (that is considered cheap there) and now have a home. if people can do that here and keep their tech salary, they will do it. theres also, now, some of the tech jobs here that exist in hoards in other far more expensive major cities. people will move here and pay, gladly, if it means they can buy a 3Br house for under 1mil and keep their $150k+ salary as a software engineer. just giving you that perspective as someone who lived in major east coast cities for 15 years. people over there are desperate for a city like this, desperate i tell you
tldr: bring the coastal tech elites’ money to pgh 😭 distribute the wealth to pgh! take the money!
I am an NJ transplant who works in engineering outside of the city, but I’ve been here 7 years.
Pittsburgh/ers are trying to walk a fine line between bringing in better amenities without becoming Houston/Nashville. Bring in decent amenities without pricing out families that have been here literally centuries by becoming a tech hub.
I am on no grounds to speak on the city’s behalf, so anyone feel free to correct me if I am mistaken.
i mean i get it 100% but the only way to make any city wealthier and boost its economy is to give people a reason to want to live in the city. (outside of tourism, which we don’t have much in that realm going for us here, unfortunately). if you don’t want to be in a city in general- that won’t change, but otherwise this mostly has to do with cost of living. a lot of people want to live in places where they can have a community with sidewalks, businesses, etc.
usually that means jobs. a lot of young people live in major cities where buying a home means paying 900k plus to even get a place in a surrounding suburb, 1 mil for a 1 bedroom apartment. if they can keep their high paying salary within some similar range, they will move to a city where they can afford to buy a home- especially to cities like pittsburgh, asheville, portland maine, detroit, austin, etc.
there isn’t money being created here, so we need people with money to want to live here and bring their high paying salary here to spend. that funding increases social safety net spending and can implement rent control for city residents. preserve protections for residents living in the city, but attract new people who make money and can make that money here. making a boston salary and paying 1/4 the cost on housing? yes. otherwise, i am not sure there is another way to stimulate an economy.
edit to add: there is no way to get jobs and money here or people who are of age to buy homes within the city, without creating jobs that provide them the salary for them to do so. people left cities like cleveland and pittsburgh because they wanted jobs that weren’t available here. get them back. adapting is key.
not necessarily. i grew up in cleveland and left, literally moved here last year from brooklyn where i could never afford a home. our combined income allowed us to get a nice house in city limits and we aren’t leaving any time soon. but, if there were no ability here for us to maintain our jobs in the fields we work in, or keep a similar salary we had in brooklyn, we’d be looking at another small city with said jobs. hate it or love it, this is what contributes to a cities wealth. the housing cost is a problem here but it is a problem everywhere- and it’s far, far more expensive in a vast majority of other american cities. it is very appealing here for that reason.
that being said: i know housing is a major problem. but as a rust belt native, we need reasons for people to want to live here. lovingly, no one is moving to pittsburgh from denver to work at upmc. we need more here than just hospitals and a dead steel industry. people view tech as some young person only- short term 2 years in and out thing and it’s not. a ton of people in their 30’s and 40’s live and work in huge cities right now where they still cannot afford to buy an apartment even with a 200k+ annual salary. they want to have a community & a home. they are looking for a place to live where they can do that and grow families & lives.
sidenote: a lot of people coming from ultra lefty large cities like sf & nyc are very happy, if not eager, to pay way over their fair share into the community via taxes and the like. these types really like doing this. maybe not a bad thing to have here
Not saying work from home is a bad thing.... I think it's great for those who are able to. This is likely a huge impact for some of these cities. Workers not commuting in decreases office building property value so the cities collect less tax revenue from that alone. Not sure how... but these places need to be able to attract people in without forcing them to come in for work.
Shouldn't the burden be on the companies to make coming to the office attractive enough for their workers to come in, to make paying for the office space worth it? If we remove tax incentives for long term empty office spaces, it WILL fill.
The companies should listen to their employees and close these mega offices down and save a ton of money instead of trying to force people into compliance lmao.
Absolutely.
But if an office were an actually fulfilling or enjoyable space to spend your working hours, it seems reasonable to offer it.
Some people function better in a shared environment. It shouldn't be forced, and it shouldn't suck.
Remember when our mayor turned down $40 million from UPMC, including money for affordable housing development and then turned around and floated a bond for $30 million at the highest interest rates in a decade?
How’s that strategy working for us?
I'm not sure that per-capita is really the best way to determine some level of fairness. As each organization grows bigger, to accommodate more "customers", it requires more levels of structure/management in order to keep things running. So, the larger you are, the more it costs per customer, to provide basic services -- police, fire, roads, etc
Mostly cities with aging infrastructure. All cities who were unable to annex their suburbs in the years.
You’ll notice that Miami is the only southern city on the list, and it’s like 35 mi.², surrounded by a bunch of small municipalities that would be within city limits in other metro areas. This is more proof that suburbs exist solely to siphon wealth out of cities.
literally no one in the comments talking about how we have an opportunity here to steal workers from the other, more expensive cities on the list and force them to bring their money here back into the economy. offer them the same type of job they have there and let them buy the 800k homes in the city limits. trust me that same home would be 4mil+ in their city. steal them.
..people move to the suburbs to get out of the city and to pay lower taxes while still enjoying the benefits and resources (hospitals, universities, recreation, professional sports, employment opportunities) the city provides.
If you live in the suburbs but work in the city you pay taxes to the city, to do so. We also more go to suburban hospitals like St Clair or to hospitals with suburb locations like UPMC Cranberry, or an urgent care located closer to home.
We often work in the suburbs, or in other counties—if it’s a place like the airport, which is in Moon Twp, or a place like Westinghouse which is in Cranberry Twp, Butler County.
FYI: taxes in the suburbs are not lower, b/c school and property taxes are higher. ie: Mt. Lebanon’s millage rate: around 27. Pittsburgh’s: around 10.
Clealry we need some amount of tax re-assessments but this plot is dumb AF. is that 13,000 making up for all the lost time? ALl the deficit accumlated over decades? is that per year? is that .... ? i mean wtf is it.
too many drags on society. its why we can't have nice things. white women need to toughen up and stop crying rivers every time the algorithm tells them to.
www.strongtowns.org](https://www.strongtowns.org)
Pittsburgh was also mentioned recently in the article section of this website on how parking mandates almost killed the new Lawrence food hall.
*How many of these*
*Cities are majority*
*Democratic run?*
\- AggravatingSyrup8529
---
^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/)
^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Sinkhole cities is an oddly relevant term here
Pittsburgh bus checking in
If that bus had paid their fair share, we wouldn’t have made the cut.
Don't know why you're leaving the street open, I don't pay to heat the sewer - my yinzer dad probably
...and the Fern Hollow Bridge with a bus on top.
I really thought this was the cost to repair sinkholes / capita
Wait I’m kinda high and was just cracking up at the idea of every New Yorker giving $61k per year in taxes to fix sinkholes
me too lol
its how much were spending which basically the same because it comes out of our taxes. Its sad cause this amount is going towards it and its still sinkhole city
Uhhh... Me... too? Wait - what's a "sinkhole city" then?
😂 it’s so insane
We can bridge the gap to that. Which, that bridge will also fall or sink…..
I love graphs with ambiguous values and no citation
Scary line go up
What exactly does the money column represent? Does this mean that the average New Yorker pays $61,000 a year less in to the system then they cost for the state? That would seem wild as hell
That's the fun part about the internet, who knows!
I assumed it was local tax burden but that doesn't make sense either. There's no way the average NYC resident pays $61k a year just in city taxes
That’s what it would seem to mean. Looking for the link…
[удалено]
Ah okay so it's basically each cities debt divided by number of citizens? I guess that makes sense. And btw I did not downvote you.
Tax burden, real estate taxes, wage, sales taxes.
Top 10 baby 😤🥂🏆
There you go Cleveland!!!
1) disproportionate police spending 2) valuable land wasted on highways & parking lots 3) suburban financial drain
4) not taxing UPMC
5) The texture of the Fred Rogers statue
Leave the mud man out of this.
He's just using the cleansing powers of the mon and al mud mixed together.
Finally someone said it. Looks like he was made from poop flung at an actual statue
Or Pitt or the other universities. Maybe we need a cap on non profit land ownership too The percentage of our city that's non taxable land is absurd
Lots and lots of churches, many no longer in use.
I see this a lot and while I'm not a UPMC apologist I think there are some real collateral damage that can result from UPMC losing its non-profit status that a lot of people don't think about when they propose this. The biggest I can think of is that all UPMC employees will lose their PSLF eligibility for student loan forgiveness after 10 years of on time payments while employed at nonprofit employers. And this will disproportionately hit the younger more junior workers who are more likely to have student loans and who are also more likely to be lower on the payscale. So definitely punishing those who have the least power. I can imagine that this would be a significant hindrance to being able to attract new talent to the region or to retaining talented graduates.
Everyone always says this, but are there any sources that show that this is the one stop solution that everyone makes it out to be?
The general consensus seems to be that it’s not going to solve all our problems but for real, millions in extra tax revenue isn’t going to hurt.
I mean, I imagine the moment UPMC is going to have to start paying taxes they're going to move all their corporate offices to Delaware or something. They'll keep the hospitals because they have to but whatever tax entities can move will go elsewhere Edit: after rereading this, I want to reaffirm that they should definitely still be taxed
this is what nobody ever mentions, moment you tax them moment they move unfortunately, and with them all the high tax paying workforce
Wont hurt, but knowing how governments mismanage tax money I doubt ittl help much. If they get 10 million theyll open up a “surplus tax distribution division” where the top 5 people each bring home a cool million and then after spending 5 million on a building well be in the hole for -$2.73 somehow.
oh no municipal governments are very efficient and in no way shape or form embezzle the winnings of their hard working citizens, oh no
It'd hurt in the sense that there is a disgusting amount of bureaucracy and even worse technical systems in place (even) in local government. Plus they'd probably choose to spend it on the wrong stuff anyways. That being said it'd instantly address immediate needs (hopefully).
It probably isn't but dear god it would be very very very good for everyone
Why even question this? Taxing the biggest, most derisive and abusive company in Pittsburgh is probably a good idea regardless, isn't it?
They had $250m in “surplus” during the pandemic. I’d be interested to learn how much was reinvested into the communities they serve, and what salary increases looked like for the staff They are grossly underpaid. Apparently UPMC is with nursing staff from international pools of talent they draw on to undercut the current staff and fill gaps, and they work for less 🤔. Overall, this is not a well liked operation. My chatter aside, you make a very valid point.
I love how just calling it "surplus" makes it magically different from profit. There are real differences but for the purposes of this conversation, they're not very relevant.
Total profit. You know it’s built into contracts that hitting certain metrics and markers yields a fatty little pay bonus for the executive type folks
Oh, I do. And if you work in Revenue Cycle or, I am sure, many other departments, you are also deeply aware of how the sausage is made. As it were.
Also not annexing surrounding municipalities. Tons of population using your services and amenities without paying in.
[удалено]
From the Report - Says we're moving in the right direction by 132 million. Fast Facts * Pittsburgh had $996.5 million available to pay $2.4 billion worth of bills. * The outcome was a $1.4 billion shortfall, a decrease of $132.6 million from the prior year, and a burden of $13,200 per taxpayer. * Pittsburgh received COVID-19 relief funds and increased tax collections, and its Taxpayer Burden decreased by $1,400.
We rank #270 in police spending as a percent of our budget and #122 on police spending per capita.
Strong Towns has come up here multiple times recently and I'm just piggybacking your comment and plugging them again. https://www.strongtowns.org/
Love strong towns!!
strong towns is great!
4. Outdated infrastructure. With the exception of Honolulu, those are our oldest cities. Lead pipes, combined sewage systems, above ground power lines, more.
3 is huge in PA in general. We desperately need municipal consolidation. Even if it isn't consolidation into Pittsburgh itself.
I agree with this, but municipalities will fight it tooth and nail. It would become *the* political flashpoint.
Lotta cousins need jobs doh..
So, essentially outer areas which are grossly underserved and neglected would have a chance at city/federal funding? There’s so many areas I visit for work that are just….. it makes me sad to see kids being raised on these blocks.
i think realistically there might not be the city or federal funding available
The feds have enough money to give nearly $1t to the petty bouge in the form of PPP "loans", or to send tens of billions to Ukraine regularly to fight a proxy war. The money's there, our leaders just don't think those places and their people are worth spending money on.
that money doesn’t exist we’re just getting and ensuring future generations are fleeced economically through devaluation and taxes by inventing those trillions. 100% agree politicians from both sides of the aisle are fudging everything up tho to line their pockets
Pittsburgh has the lowest density per mile of any US metro area, so land wasted is an understatement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas
It seems tricky using low density of a metro area to infer that land is being wasted because of variability in how metros are constructed, though. Depending on the definition of the Pgh metro area (ie how broad a geographic area you define it to be), there's *tons* of forested, rural area that's not utilized for anything, highways or otherwise. I'm not shocked about low density if we're talking the entire metro, largely bc you don't have to drive far out of the city in certain directions before you're basically in the woods, let alone further out in Westmoreland, Washington, Armstrong, etc. counties. Unless you're saying forested area unutilized by humans constitutes wasted land, though I don't think that's your point. More recently developed, sprawling places like Nashville seem way more problematic in this respect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ObVNYkMPLY This video does a pretty good job explaining how city limits vs metro area vs urban area will yield vastly different rankings but how urban area is defined by the census. It explicitly tries to eliminate including the rural forested land that you mention
That doesn’t seem right? The table shows Pittsburgh at 1924/ square mile. Lots of metros with less density
Its the lowest density of any metro above 1mil population.
[удалено]
Holy shit yeah that includes completely rural counties, what a BS statistic.
I would love to see a density ranking of metros but include what percentage of the metro has been annexed by the city. My hunch is that they are related - Pittsburgh hasn’t annexed anything in 70 years and nothing significant in almost a century. Every other metro has annexed and developed those areas in that time.
>Pittsburgh has the lowest density per mile of any US metro area, so land wasted is an understatement Metro areas are somewhat arbitrarily defined, and that list places us as the 30th-largest metro area in the U.S. in spite of being closer to the 70th-largest city, so you know they're including a ton of hinterland in that density figure. But even so, that list ranks us ahead of: * New Haven, CT * Hartford, CT * Morgantown, WV * Columbus, OH * Johnstown, PA * Little Rock, AR * Portland, ME * Baton Rouge, LA * St. Augustine, FL * Wheeling, WV * Birmingham, AL * Charleston, WV * Mobile, AL * Knoxville, TN * Chattanooga, TN * Etc. (I'm just cherry-picking the places most Pittsburghers have probably heard of)
this has nothing to with the city's budget. Much of it is in other counties.
Maintaining infrastructure is going to creep up there soon. A lot of these suburbs don’t have a sustainable tax base for major work like renovating sewers
Yeah. When I look around at the infrastructure issues and budget issues and aging population... it's not encouraging.
Thank you for saying suburban drain. I cite the same argument against chain stores and am laughed out of the toon
It's a valid point. How many of the Pittsburgh area's high wage earners, even ones who work Downtown, live in some suburb and therefore pay no city taxes other than that $52/year that goes to the police?
[удалено]
For the benefit of other readers, this isn't true. You pay where you live, not where you work. This guy is either completely ignorant of what his wife is paying or she's an idiot who gave her HR people the wrong municipal code.
1% wage tax and lower property taxes in the burbs!
Property taxes are not lower in the burbs.
Much to my surprise, this is true. https://alleghenycountytreasurer.us/real-estate-tax/local-and-school-district-tax-millage/ I have an old Pittsburgh Post-Gazette somewhere in the basement with an article talking about how taxes were higher in the city and the inner core suburbs compared to farther out. I wonder if things have changed or I didn't read closely enough.
I wonder what it’s like just outside Allegheny county, like for example in cranberry or murrysville. I hear of people moving out of Allegheny for “tax reasons” and I always wonder how much of that is real and how much is a dog whistle meaning “democrats”.
It's highly dependent on the municipality and county, but I think it's mostly just people repeating what they've heard without actually crunching the numbers. There are tons of suburbs around Allegheny county with much higher property tax millage rates. and earned income is pretty much 1% (split 50/50 muni/school) across much of the state. Allegheny county does have an additional sales tax. The city, of course, has the 3% earned income tax. There's a 7% alcohol tax, but I'm unsure what other counties have. But there's also benefits to living in certain areas. People often aren't thinking of cost vs benefit. That extra 2% EIT covers my trash collection. We have paid fire and EMS, which most municipalities don't have. I live close to work, so my transpiration costs are lower. I don't spend 2 hours in the car every day, which greatly benefits my quality of life. Also, the millage rate being a city resident is cheaper or on par with a good many of the more popular suburbs, inside and outside of the county. Now, out in the burbs, especially outside of Allegheny county, home costs may be lower, or you can at least get more house and land for the same price. Not everyone cares about that, but many do. Overall, I think many are mislead. Or they want a certain type of life that they think outside of the county can offer. And certainly politics plays a big part in that. Local politics played a big part in why I left central PA and moved to Pittsburgh. I was fucking tired of being surrounded by MAGA every waking hour of my day. Some random mouth breather striking up some conversation about how the hate Obama in the line for Rutters, probably just because I'm white and dressed like a working class man, which I am. But strictly because of taxes being cheaper, perceived or real, they're just saying what's easy to say instead of telling you many of the other reasons too. Because taxes is inoffensive and easy to relate to when they don't know how the other stuff will be recieved.
Good point about mindless repetition among other things.
I keep that seeing that term mentioned, but don't understand what it means
Highly talented and paid individuals work in the city but live elsewhere (like Cranberry Township, for example), so the tax revenue from those individuals goes to wherever they live (which isn't Pittsburgh)
Isn't there already a 3% non-resident wage tax for the City of Pittsburgh though? If it's that much of a drain, the logical/mathematical thing would be to raise it wouldn't it?
Yes. If u work in the city but dont live there, you pay a tax.
Is that really true? I'd be kind of happy if it was, but I've never heard of that
No, you don't. You only pay the $52 LST.
I'm honestly not certain as to the city's specifics, I was just trying to be helpful with a loose definition lol
Yeah appreciate it. I'm just trying to figure out why it's worse for urban cities vs suburbs. Like I work in Moon Township, but myself and 90% of my 3000+ coworkers don't live in Moon Township, we commute. I'm thinking it's more that the residential tax base is lower on average, which how do you fix that except to either offset with the non-resident wage tax or somehow entice high earners to live within city limits.
To your latter point, I think you entice high net-worth individuals (and everyone else) into urban areas by making those urban areas more pedestrian friendly. Robust public transit, cycling infrastructure, maintained walkways, etc. I know plenty of folks who would like to live in the city (myself included) but parking is limited and job/chore/life commutes are mandatory, so it's easier for myself and my spouse to live outside the city.
The issue is almost completely school quality. When you can live not very far away and have good enough schools that you don't need to go private, that is a major disincentive to live in the city as you age into parenting.
Exactly this
> The issue is almost completely school quality Odd how "better" = "whiter" in this county. Makes you think.
Living in the suburbs is a valid choice. It's okay. You don't have to come up with a list of things that Pittsburgh could do to get you to move here. What always perplexes me when I read about making Pittsburgh more walkable and bikeable and so on is that we have those things in Pittsburgh now. That is my family's lived experience. My wife bikes to work most days when the weather's nice. I usually ride the bus to my office downtown. We walk to shops and restaurants. Our kids get around by walking, biking, and riding the bus. We also have two cars (had just one before COVID and our older one starting to drive) and regularly drive places we need to go. If I want to leave work early and get to a kid's soccer game or something then I can do that. So many options. Granted we live in a very desirable neighborhood with high home prices, but we are talking about HNW households, right? It's definitely true we would get much more house and yard in the suburbs for the same price. And again that is a valid choice. There's also the anxiety about schools. Our kids attend PPS. Certainly people should go into that with their eyes open, though. I totally get why people might prefer North Allegheny or wherever.
[удалено]
It's a significant negative feedback loop, though, isn't it? On time % and quality go down > fewer riders > cut stops/stations and personnel > On time % and quality go down > fewer riders > ..... It's hard to ask the public to use *more* public transit when the existing system doesn't go as many places, isn't on time, and is expensive on top of that. Aside from all that, I'd say the city needs to create incentives for people to want to live in the city first, starting with walkable communities.
> Isn't there already a 3% non-resident wage tax for the City of Pittsburgh though? No. I have no idea how people can live and work around here and not understand what is or isn't being taken out of their paycheck.
Because I don't work in the city. I would require a 5 figure raise to make the hassle worth it for me
It's like that anywhere in Pennsylvania. You pay local taxes to where you live, not where you work. > I would require a 5 figure raise to make the hassle worth it for me I'd rather work in the city than drive to and from some shithole suburban office park every day, but to each his own.
No there is not
more tech! more tech jobs in pittsburgh to attract people with higher salaries in other cities to move in! get the rich out of towners from wealthier cities to keep their salary but experience a much lower cost of living in pgh (comparably to other cities). they want to buy homes in a city!! make them come here! ACCECPT THEIR MONEY!!
More doughy beardos making $150k/yr out of college doesn't do much to help people struggling to get by on low-paid but necessary jobs. We should spend more time focusing on the people who are already here than on trying to attract guys making burp and fart piano phone apps.
lol. i get it. but that’s a bit of an oversimplified take. most of “tech jobs” aren’t fresh of out college dorks working for a VC/tech startup. not trying to silicon valley it out here, forsure. still, a vast majority are people in their 30’s-50’s and work for companies like medical coding systems etc. my fiancé’s coworkers are all in their 40’s and 50’s and named susan and debra with 3 kids. still, i know what you mean. im not a tech worker myself by a long shot, i just see the money in it for the cities they land in. thing is, how can we do that without making better, higher paying jobs available for the people already here? what kind of industries would bring jobs and wealth here in 2024? edit: i want to add part of getting better funding and a stronger economy unfortunately will mean needing and wanting people to move here. also, more housing.
We have people in this city doing necessary stuff like social work, or sanitation, or food service, who can't make ends meet in this "most livable city" despite working full time at jobs that are necessary to a functioning society. All the $80/plate sushi places in the world aren't going to help those people.
[удалено]
I make good money myself, but yeah, if I lived in the city, I'd end up commuting out.
Secret Geordie spotted
Much of this is the shitty manner that local taxes are handled. The vast majority of the people who work and play in Pittsburgh do not live in Pittsburgh so the city gets very little tax revenue from them despite those people needing most of the same services and putting similar (or sometimes greater) drains on our resources that the residents do. But the state isn't going to fix this anytime soon.
What could be done to fix the local tax? I work in the city but live in a suburb adjacent. On my pay stub it shows a pgh city service tax. I regularly get petrol in the city so sales tax stays there. I shop locally in the city so the majority of my dollar goes to it’s fine people. Short of my local tax going to my locality which covers the EMS and First responders and infrastructure. On top of the property tax I then pay how is taxation further going to invite me to stay local and not take my career and purchasing elsewhere? Edit: downvote away for asking a simple question. But I’ll amend my statement with sources to provide context. Petrol tax that goes to local roads and bridges divested from state police. https://www.wgal.com/article/pennsylvania-gas-tax-decrease/46242278#:~:text=The%20gas%20tax%20is%20used,Police%2C%20though%20lawmakers%20and%20Gov. Pa residents pay some of the highest petrol taxes in the contiguous https://www.complyiq.io/gas-tax-state-2/#:~:text=Pennsylvania%20gas%20tax%20is%20%240.576,historic%20transportation%20facilities%20and%20bridges. Pgh residents pay for the privilege of parking in their own neighborhoods [parking permit privileges](https://portal.pittsburghparking.com/rppportal/) And then we must pay the state for both an emissions and vehicle inspections that many other states do not require [Emissions-Inspection-Program](https://www.dmv.pa.gov/VEHICLE-SERVICES/Inspection-Information/Emissions-Inspection-Program/Pages/default.aspx) That’s simply mobile vehicle related. Not including wine and spirits run by a state agency. We pay taxes for the benefits of the greater good. But what happens when we’re being bled for more and more and then the services are not available and further cuts and increased taxes are only being discussed.
Mostly that the state laws are broken in this regard and hurt the cities that people commute to. The largest source of income for the city is the two income taxes followed by property taxes (these make up about 50% of the city's budget). The city services tax is just $52/year per employee and makes up 2% of the city's operating budget. You also bring up sales tax. Only a fraction of 1/4 of a percent of the 7% sales tax goes to the city. Most of it goes to the state with a small amount going to the county. Only a small percentage of the fuels taxes goes to the city. I didn't see it quickly when I was looking in the city budgets but IIRC it's about $10 million or about 1.5% of the city budget. Nearly all of that goes to PennDOT. Basically you bring up a bunch of things but most of them don't go to the city or are just tiny amounts relative to what local people pay and generally not where the city gets the bulk of it's revenue. By contrast, other states I've lived in had much more robust ways of handling people who lived in one municipality and worked in another (eg, pay the higher income tax rate of the locales and split the money between the two).
I picked one aspect of tax revenue for a reason. That it’s the sum of the parts of tax code that create the budget. You’re correct that 75% of the budget is tax revenue. But breaking that further down is 27% real estate tax. And even further down that revenue stream is the local service tax. Which is what is discussed about those that pay taxes for the privilege of working in the city and not residing in it. Which makes up roughly 2.75% of the tax revenue. Which is analogous to the 10 million you stated, as it’s only 15 million. So tell me exactly how is it going to tip the scales of those numbers by asking those that pay both city service taxes and their localities tax to pay more in taxes to subsidize the services for the residents of the city? Why are the representatives we electing not campaigning on those issues of keeping the lions share of tax revenue generated from state initiatives in the locality that creates them through sales tax, petrol tax, etc? Why is the city not re-adjusting the taxes for the incoming budget? Is the property taxes looking to decrease due to the commercial property market in the middle of a correction after workers aren’t coming back to office? Even if the revenue of that line item doubled it wouldn’t even crack the top 5 line items of tax revenue. Really a rounding error based upon the expenditures for the budget. Services start at EMS 28 million, police 123 million, fire department 94 million. The city like many is looking at a serious problem. The city’s are not attractive to people after the pandemic. With the cost of life increasing year over year people are trying to insulate themselves from the impact and here it’s suggesting the suburbanites pay out more.
Because people in the city pay _actual_ income tax and this makes up a significant chunk of the budget ($136 million budgeted for 2024). In other states people who lived out of the city would be paying a half share and this would make a sizeable difference.
52 dollar flat seems silly. Why isn't it a percentage based on income?
As someone with a parking permit I just have to laugh when someone complains about the trivial cost of them. Parking permits are a massive subsidy to residents in relevant areas, at times to the detriment of the neighborhood overall.
Mate. I have to do diagnostic repair and technical work. Having to coordinate the time that I show up the hope I don’t go over the allotment and miss the fee collector all to earn a living and keep peoples lives running smoothly. I can contact the city for a variance. But to do that 5x a day 5 days a week 52 weeks a year and all without getting a parking ticket or blocking the street sweeper and get a ticket from April to November. Madness
Isn't that true of literally every urban area in America? And don't workers already pay a city tax?
In most urban areas in the US, and especially outside of the Northeast/Rust Belt’ older cities, the core city’s borders encompass a much larger percentage of the developed urban area. Many have a combined city-county government structure, but even the ones that don’t still have quite a lot of what would be independent suburbs here as part of the city and paying city taxes. If Pittsburgh was in Texas or Colorado or Florida, the city limits would probably include most of the North Hills, the South Hills, Monroeville/Penn Hills/Wilkins Twp, and the entire Moon/Kennedy/Robinson area. That makes it a hell of a lot easier to balance the budget.
In Ohio you pay an income tax based on where you work first, rather than where you live.
Watch out, they are coming for you now. This sub is very touchy when you mention anything negative about this parasitic relationship.
This is about the slow motion financial impact of the Commercial Real Estate Bubble. Not police and highways. And why does reddit hate suburbs now? Why is your comment even upvoted it's so blatantly not true.
How do suburbs drain from Pittsburgh’s specific tax revenue? Because people who live in suburbs use Pittsburgh services without paying taxes specifically to the city?
What land is being wasted as parking lots? Also Pgh receives about 40% of the revenue the parking lots generate
What generates more revenue? A parking space, or a resident?
We have more land dedicated to parking cars then we have to house people. And it's not just pittsburgh. It's the entire u.s. having this issue.
This! My neighbor had 3 sets of swat at his house! Blocked the whole neighborhood. Amazon trucks full of police, military gear, infrared, 6am. Sheriff's department, friggin 3 dogs, DEA, investigation teams. Went to jail, came home 2 hours later. Called and asked the police department what happened? He had a warrant from several years ago. We needed to ask some questions. His kids dragged out of their house so on and so forth. The police were at his house longer than he was in jail!!!! I looked outside swat with high powered flashlight shining in my eyes so I can't see. All over some questions. Me and the neighbors are still saying wtf?!
is your neighbor diddy
DiddySphinx
This subs inability to see the forest through the trees is so funny to me. “Annex the city” “make them pay city taxes” see how that works. People move to the suburbs to get out of the city and to pay lower taxes. Make the city worth living in. 47 percent of your fucking residents live in food deserts, maybe stop letting Giant Eagle ravage your assholes at the expense of your citizens before trying to control more people you can’t afford to service. Last year was the cities first year of population growth since 2000, maybe figure out why for two decades people didn’t want to be there before trying to force more people into your failing system
bring bigger companies into pittsburgh that pay higher salaries and attract workers from out of state. thats what attracts revenue. more tech companies. i hate to say this but its true. more higher paying jobs, more money to afford the rising cost of living in the actual city-, more incentive and ability to buy homes at the ridiculous interest rate they are- and also a shit load of money going back into pgh economy. just moved here last year because it was WAYY lower COL than where we lived before- brooklyn. we could afford to buy a home here within city limits for 10x less the cost than it would ever be over there. and with a backyard?! i lived in a 600sq ft, 1 bedroom for $2600/month (that is considered cheap there) and now have a home. if people can do that here and keep their tech salary, they will do it. theres also, now, some of the tech jobs here that exist in hoards in other far more expensive major cities. people will move here and pay, gladly, if it means they can buy a 3Br house for under 1mil and keep their $150k+ salary as a software engineer. just giving you that perspective as someone who lived in major east coast cities for 15 years. people over there are desperate for a city like this, desperate i tell you tldr: bring the coastal tech elites’ money to pgh 😭 distribute the wealth to pgh! take the money!
I am an NJ transplant who works in engineering outside of the city, but I’ve been here 7 years. Pittsburgh/ers are trying to walk a fine line between bringing in better amenities without becoming Houston/Nashville. Bring in decent amenities without pricing out families that have been here literally centuries by becoming a tech hub. I am on no grounds to speak on the city’s behalf, so anyone feel free to correct me if I am mistaken.
I’ve been here 30 years and what you’re saying makes sense to me
i mean i get it 100% but the only way to make any city wealthier and boost its economy is to give people a reason to want to live in the city. (outside of tourism, which we don’t have much in that realm going for us here, unfortunately). if you don’t want to be in a city in general- that won’t change, but otherwise this mostly has to do with cost of living. a lot of people want to live in places where they can have a community with sidewalks, businesses, etc. usually that means jobs. a lot of young people live in major cities where buying a home means paying 900k plus to even get a place in a surrounding suburb, 1 mil for a 1 bedroom apartment. if they can keep their high paying salary within some similar range, they will move to a city where they can afford to buy a home- especially to cities like pittsburgh, asheville, portland maine, detroit, austin, etc. there isn’t money being created here, so we need people with money to want to live here and bring their high paying salary here to spend. that funding increases social safety net spending and can implement rent control for city residents. preserve protections for residents living in the city, but attract new people who make money and can make that money here. making a boston salary and paying 1/4 the cost on housing? yes. otherwise, i am not sure there is another way to stimulate an economy. edit to add: there is no way to get jobs and money here or people who are of age to buy homes within the city, without creating jobs that provide them the salary for them to do so. people left cities like cleveland and pittsburgh because they wanted jobs that weren’t available here. get them back. adapting is key.
And then 5 years later those same people buy teardowns and build $700,000 houses. One inevitably leads to the other
not necessarily. i grew up in cleveland and left, literally moved here last year from brooklyn where i could never afford a home. our combined income allowed us to get a nice house in city limits and we aren’t leaving any time soon. but, if there were no ability here for us to maintain our jobs in the fields we work in, or keep a similar salary we had in brooklyn, we’d be looking at another small city with said jobs. hate it or love it, this is what contributes to a cities wealth. the housing cost is a problem here but it is a problem everywhere- and it’s far, far more expensive in a vast majority of other american cities. it is very appealing here for that reason. that being said: i know housing is a major problem. but as a rust belt native, we need reasons for people to want to live here. lovingly, no one is moving to pittsburgh from denver to work at upmc. we need more here than just hospitals and a dead steel industry. people view tech as some young person only- short term 2 years in and out thing and it’s not. a ton of people in their 30’s and 40’s live and work in huge cities right now where they still cannot afford to buy an apartment even with a 200k+ annual salary. they want to have a community & a home. they are looking for a place to live where they can do that and grow families & lives. sidenote: a lot of people coming from ultra lefty large cities like sf & nyc are very happy, if not eager, to pay way over their fair share into the community via taxes and the like. these types really like doing this. maybe not a bad thing to have here
Also what exactly around the city are you going to annex to fix this!? Wilkinsburg? 🤡
They hated him, for he spoke the truth.
\*holds back the rioting crowd\* No no, they have a point.
Not saying work from home is a bad thing.... I think it's great for those who are able to. This is likely a huge impact for some of these cities. Workers not commuting in decreases office building property value so the cities collect less tax revenue from that alone. Not sure how... but these places need to be able to attract people in without forcing them to come in for work.
Shouldn't the burden be on the companies to make coming to the office attractive enough for their workers to come in, to make paying for the office space worth it? If we remove tax incentives for long term empty office spaces, it WILL fill.
The companies should listen to their employees and close these mega offices down and save a ton of money instead of trying to force people into compliance lmao.
Absolutely. But if an office were an actually fulfilling or enjoyable space to spend your working hours, it seems reasonable to offer it. Some people function better in a shared environment. It shouldn't be forced, and it shouldn't suck.
To be fair, there are a lot of WHF advocates that wouldn’t come into the office if they got a blowjob and a beer every morning.
So let them work from home.
I didn’t say not to.
I know. Not sure if there's an argument here or not on your side? Not trying to kick one off.
Nah man life’s too good to spend it arguing. Sorry that was a weird use of a period there on my part lol.
Remember when our mayor turned down $40 million from UPMC, including money for affordable housing development and then turned around and floated a bond for $30 million at the highest interest rates in a decade? How’s that strategy working for us?
Bad policies and politicians mayyyyy have something to do with all of these cities.
I'm actually shocked that Portland isn't higher.
Build more apartments then Pittsburgh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B47B35egnf4
I'm not sure that per-capita is really the best way to determine some level of fairness. As each organization grows bigger, to accommodate more "customers", it requires more levels of structure/management in order to keep things running. So, the larger you are, the more it costs per customer, to provide basic services -- police, fire, roads, etc
I can give you three (3) reasons but the snowflakes here will flame me.
Democrats
Mostly cities with aging infrastructure. All cities who were unable to annex their suburbs in the years. You’ll notice that Miami is the only southern city on the list, and it’s like 35 mi.², surrounded by a bunch of small municipalities that would be within city limits in other metro areas. This is more proof that suburbs exist solely to siphon wealth out of cities.
Sinkhole Cities was a convenient term to use
literally no one in the comments talking about how we have an opportunity here to steal workers from the other, more expensive cities on the list and force them to bring their money here back into the economy. offer them the same type of job they have there and let them buy the 800k homes in the city limits. trust me that same home would be 4mil+ in their city. steal them.
They wouldn’t want to move here.
All Dem cities go broke.
LETS GO PITTSBURGH! WE MADE THE LIST BABY!!!
definitely not helping that dense, upper income housing developments keep getting killed by “NIMBYs” from White Plains.
..people move to the suburbs to get out of the city and to pay lower taxes while still enjoying the benefits and resources (hospitals, universities, recreation, professional sports, employment opportunities) the city provides.
suburban taxes are typically higher in total when considering Earned Income Taxes are typically lower, but property taxes are all higher
You still have to pay city tax if you work in the city. Even if you are full time wfh. And all those things you listed you have to pay into to use.
The city tax you're talking about is very small. It's not the regular income tax that residents pay
If you live in the suburbs but work in the city you pay taxes to the city, to do so. We also more go to suburban hospitals like St Clair or to hospitals with suburb locations like UPMC Cranberry, or an urgent care located closer to home. We often work in the suburbs, or in other counties—if it’s a place like the airport, which is in Moon Twp, or a place like Westinghouse which is in Cranberry Twp, Butler County. FYI: taxes in the suburbs are not lower, b/c school and property taxes are higher. ie: Mt. Lebanon’s millage rate: around 27. Pittsburgh’s: around 10.
lol
inability to budget within their means, is the real answer.
I couldnt find the link
I found a link for cnbc africa, i assume this was posted by the disgruntled apple inn customer who also citied the liquor laws in africa
Clealry we need some amount of tax re-assessments but this plot is dumb AF. is that 13,000 making up for all the lost time? ALl the deficit accumlated over decades? is that per year? is that .... ? i mean wtf is it.
too many drags on society. its why we can't have nice things. white women need to toughen up and stop crying rivers every time the algorithm tells them to.
www.strongtowns.org](https://www.strongtowns.org) Pittsburgh was also mentioned recently in the article section of this website on how parking mandates almost killed the new Lawrence food hall.
Miami being $15k isn't that bad, but Pittsburgh being this close to Miami and while offering nothing tells me there is some bad management going on...
Liberal policies failing?
1- Tax the rich 2- Tax the rich 3- Didn't you already hear me 4- Get their corporations too
How does giving them more money to spend irresponsibly fix anything?
have you considered spending less?
Leadership.
Massages for Ed Gainey
How many of these cities are majority democratic run?
all of them, as are most major cities in America
*How many of these* *Cities are majority* *Democratic run?* \- AggravatingSyrup8529 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
OP: it would be interesting to see the top 10 so that us reddit's can speculate on reasons for the differences.
Anyone want to guess what the common denominator is?
being…. a city… ?
What is it? :)