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It looks like there could be 3 hot primary races for City Council seats this year in Districts #2, #4 and #6; and in District #8 there may turn out to be a good partisan battle come November as well between incumbent William Peduto[D] and the possible challenger Greg Neugebauer[R].

Who cares about City Council races?

Council members don’t get the pseudo-celebrity status that our mayor enjoys so in preparing this posting I wondered just how important the council is to every day folks on the street. In a very unscientific polling of a very small sampling, my results were that only 1 in 12 city residents could name more than 1 of the current council members.

Again, my polling was nothing close to scientific nor even professional really, I just asked a dozen people I know who are between the ages of 18 and 55, and only 1 of them knew the names of more than a single council member. Also noteworthy and troubling  is that 5 of them couldn’t name even 1 current member, though 1 of those people did say “Bruce Shields?”. Perhaps he meant Bruce Kraus or Doug Shields, or maybe I should count his questioning-answer as him [sort of] knowing 2 council members?  A little fuzzy math never hurts in political polling.

There are a lot of reasons why every resident should care about who represents their community with the city. They are our voices for bringing business and economic developments to our neighborhoods. They lobby the city, county, state and federal governments on our behalf to bring tax dollar investments to our communities. They are our connections and resources to government activities and procedures that tend to be overly complex for even an educated outsider to tackle on their own. And they are the front-line watchdogs over how the city operates and spends our tax dollars from day to day–just to name a few.

Living on the western edge of District #2 it often feels like this is the District that time forgot. In fact, while speaking recently with one candidate, Robert Frank, I mentioned how years ago (I’ve been here almost 40 now) the city and neighborhood residents worked as partners to keep our community clean and safe.

Graffiti never lasted long on public walls, trash never just sat along the curbs or collected into piles from illegal dumping, because the neighbors were willing to do something about it and the city was willing to provide supplies and support for us. But that time of civic partnership seems lost in the last decade.

Today my front porch view is of graffiti covered walls and an illegal dumping site that have both sat untouched for years. The city steps near my home which connect the upper hillside of Sheraden with Esplen (and the McKees Rocks Plaza) have more steps missing than are in place, but people still use them despite the dangerous trek of sliding in the mud and overgrown brush where large groups of steps no longer exist, because to not use them would mean adding over a mile to their travels, a large part of that along a busy through-way with a long stretch of broken sidewalk anyway.

These are all fixable things that wouldn’t require a lot of money (other than the sidewalk repairs) and as in the past could be community partnership projects that bring the city and neighbors together. But as I said, we’re sort of the District that time forgot and I’ve watched as these silly, fixable things went overlooked year after year.

The glimmer of hope going forward is that almost all of the candidates currently running in these races seem to have honest enthusiasm for bridging the divide that has grown between many residents and the city government to encourage more city support for civic participation among neighbors.

That excites me because I don’t believe sitting back and expecting government to fix all of our community problems ever leads to ‘things getting done’–but when the government and residents come together to put a collective ’shoulder to the wheel’ anything is possible.

A brief look at the races

In District #2 the following Democrats are running:  (past special election winner) Theresa Kail-Smith, Georgia Blotzer and Robert Frank.

In District #4 the following Democrats are running:  Natalia Rudiak, Anthony Coghill, Patrick Reilly and Richard Weaver.

And in District #6 the battle is between the following Democrats:  incumbent Tonya Payne, James A. Williams, Daniel Lavelle and Mark Brentley Sr.

Commentary on the candidates

I haven’t commented on individual candidates above because I’d first like to invite you to comment below on any or all of them.

Who do you like or not? Why? Have you met and talked with any of them? What issues most concern you and which candidates do or don’t seem interested in them? Whatever you want to discuss about City Council and these races is fine, I hope to start a good open discussion between neighbors here.

Having written on the state of District #2 as I see it in recent years I do want to point out that Smith won a special election for the District #2 seat and was only sworn in on February 19th, 2009, so it would not be fair to connect her with any of the overlooked problems I’ve mentioned.

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