Snow Removal, ICE Restrictions & UPMC's Big Gift

This is CityCast Pittsburgh. I'm Megan Harris, and here's what Pittsburgh's talking about. What's the most interesting snow-related thing you've each seen this week? I'll go first. Mine is the dune buggy turning circles outside PNC Park. I love that. I think mine is a bearded dragon staring at the snow. This was technically from last year, but I saw it now. Okay. That does not count. Colin redeem her. That's so rude. I hope the bearded dragon got a good eye full of snow this year as well. Same. I saw a lot of skiers and snowboarders out and about. It was really cool. There were basically every street in Upper Lawrenceville, there were people sledding or skiing or something. I feel like Troy Hill did it right too. We all saw that. Not all of us saw the bearded dragon. Fine. I am with producer Sophia Lowe, bearded dragon enthusiast, critter enthusiast this week, and Citicast contributor Colin Williams. Welcome. It's Friday. We made it. Hello. Yes, we did. We're going to talk about snow today and unfortunately also ice. That juxtaposition still hits my brain so, so weird right now because I feel like that stuff has really popped off even more this week, especially locally. We're going to be talking about what officials are saying about ICE and how we're. going to deal with that. If things escalate here in Pittsburgh, we also collected a bunch of resources for people and we'll talk about ways to get involved. And then we've got some wins and losses for the week. I will spoil it. That does include the new Steelers coach. However, you have a few minutes to think about whether you think that's a win or a loss. And, you know, just a quick recap of what else we've talked about. On Monday, we had an episode about why we have so many vacant homes, but still a housing shortage in Pittsburgh. On Tuesday, we talked self-driving cars because Waymo is in town. I've seen their cars zipping around a little bit. And then Wednesday, we went over what is happening with our snowplows. We're more like, where are they? Yeah, yeah. box like a lot like I think the phrase is where are all the damn snow plows yeah yeah because my streets still looks like a mess so kind of asking that too Thursday we talked about groundhog day coming up Monday I got to geek out about critters 10 out of 10 but today we are returning back to snow I guess

Yes, we are getting more snow plows, more ambulances. Eventually, there's sort of a caveat to that. In case you missed it, yesterday Mayor O'Connor announced that UPMC has given the city a $10 million one-time gift to help replace aging vehicles, ambulances and equipment. We're going to be able to buy, am I getting this right, nine new ambulances, one rescue truck. So we get to purchase them this year. But the fulfillment time takes forever. It's like a year to a year and a half. So this will be useful in the future. And that will theoretically. I'm still crossing my fingers that this is the worst of the snow for this year. Well, that's ambulances. We haven't gotten to the snow vehicles yet. Okay, okay. I'm skipping ahead. I know. So because UPMC is giving us that money. That means that the city can use its budget to cover DPW vehicles. So they're estimating 35 new trucks earlier this week when we talked to the city controller about snow plows. She brought up an important point, I think, that like those vehicles cost a bloody fortune now. Since the pandemic, you know, we've all experienced like the heightened price of everything. Tariffs because a lot of these vehicles are. Supply chain stuff. They're U.S. made, but their parts aren't. So the tariff cost has gone way. way up in the last year. She was just lamenting that we didn't purchase more of these with like ARPA money, the federal money during COVID, because it would have been so much cheaper to have done it four years ago instead of now. But here we are. Whomp. Well, O'Connor says that his team has been doing outreach to a bunch of different organizations, but UPMC is actually the one that called the city up this week and made this offer. Okay, sure. So magnanimous of them. It is nice to see UPMC finally at the bargaining table and voluntarily so. Yeah, I'll celebrate that this is at least a tangible thing. Yeah, absolutely. I will say, though, a one-time gift of $10 million, I think, is a very small drop. in the bucket. And I mean, to the point that you guys just brought up, like, how expensive are trucks these days and we're going to be buying 35 of them? That's a pretty big expense. Yeah, but I think the estimate for the tax increase that council passed right at the end of the year in 2025, that's going to bring in $27, $28 million. I don't think they're using all of that for vehicles, but I assume that's the amount of money that we're now going to be able to use for vehicles. There was a budgeted amount, too, but it was super duper low. And that's the thing. Like one time is great. We need to be purchasing a lot of vehicles every year for the next several years. Yeah, the problem with deferred maintenance in the city is really a sticky one. I mean, this is something that controller Heisler has been very vocal about for quite some time. The snowplow issue came up at the end of the mayoral election. And in December, once again, when we had a bunch of snowplows go down. What's interesting to see, I guess, with all this stuff is that O'Connor has not been as vocal about, you know, bringing UPMC to the table to challenge their tax exempt status on things like parking lots.

Not legally. Like, that's what, that was Ganey's tactic. Like, Ganey wanted, Gany took them all to court. Paduto said he wanted to make handshake deals. I forget now what Ravenstall's tactic was before that, but like they've all tried something. Yeah, it feels, it kind of feels to me like we went from a bit of a stick approach to more of a carrot approach. But it remains to be seen if we can get more than $10 million using a little bit gentler tactics, I would say. And I also think, Colin, we were talking about this just before we turned on the mics, comparing that to say like how much money PMC spends. I don't know if you still have figures pulled up. Yeah. So before this episode, I was looking at the cost of an MRI machine because that's a pretty expensive item that hospitals have to buy. And they apparently cost somewhere between $150,000 and up to $3 million. So if we're going conservative here, this is, let's say, five to 10 MRI machines. More on the macro level, though, if we're talking about, say, a private jet that costs around $50 million, our tax increase and UPMC's gift still don't quite equal that. And that $10 million gift is actually lower than the total compensation that UPMC CEO Leslie Davis took home in 2023. She took home about $11 million that year. And that was just her retirement package. Like just the package. Really? Okay. Not salary. Just the package. I thought this was salary, which is also going to make my like jaw drop. Yes, I know PMC could cough up a lot more, but I'm at least hopeful that this like one time thing is going to open up more. So. Fingers crossed, I'm staying hopeful for once. Well, this all started because we were talking about the legal challenges that Ganey started. The courts move slowly. So those are technically still in progress. But O'Connor's been, I would say, vague to lukewarm, somewhere in that range on whether he really cares whether they proceed. I've heard behind the scenes from several city officials now that they fully expect some kind of deal with our big five, the major nonprofits. in the next six months. I hope they're right. I hope they're right, too. This could be maybe the proverbial inch that they give and the city could use to take a little bit more. So we'll see if we get anywhere close to a mile out of the big five nonprofits. Truly. Before we move on, I feel like we should also just like update on the state of the city. Like I'm glad we're going to get more snow plows for a year to two years from now. But we still have a tremendous amount of snow on the ground here today. The most recent snow update as we're recording, O'Connor said that the city had about 50 city vehicles out. But because of the emergency declaration, they're working with contractors and they have dozens more of the 37 snow plows that broke down on sun. So that was the whole problem, right? Like we started with like 80-ish. And then that night, like almost half of them broke down and had to be repaired. They've so far of the 37 that broke. They got 27 of them back online. I'm just that's better than I expected. Y'all, I can't wait to see this maintenance bill. Like our contracts with city like city vehicle maintenance operators are astronomical.

they're going to be nuts after this month. I'm sure the fuel costs for this are also going to be through the roof. When you're talking about older, less efficient vehicles, some of which are potentially idling while they try and stay warm, waiting for repairs. Well, the city said that they're also like some of them were literally running constantly, 24 to 36 hours each. Wow. They're not shutting down the car except to refuel it. Like, I mean, even if I did that with my personal car, I think it would hiccup a little bit. One thing that is back running right now that I think is important for Pittsburghers to know about is that the city's snowplow tracker does appear to be back online. Hallelujah. I was able to check it and I was able to see progress in my neighborhood. I could actually see at some of the DPW depots where there were groups of vehicles waiting presumably to be repaired. But being able to see them at all was a big improvement over where we were at in December. I think that's just such a huge leg up that like. more northern states have on Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh region. Like, I know it's done by city or by municipality, but like... I want us to lean into that because I think like we all, it's easier to track to. Like, let's give them ridiculous names so that we start to root for them. Like, I feel like that's a way genuinely to get public buy-in on stuff like this is to like give it a personality. Like I want, I don't want to root for plow. Plow-Face. Yeah, I don't want to root for plow number 47. I want to root for plowie McPow face. And this could be a good opportunity, you know, to get people excited about the new snow plows. naming contest. Ooh, yeah. We should do that. Fully support that. Yeah. And also the old ones. Like, that's fine. They deserve some naming rights to. Actually, let's raffle that off to all of the like really high dollar corporations. I'm fine with rooting for PNC if it's a snowplow in my neighborhood. PNC plow, plow and sea. As to the snow collection here in the city, Mayor O'Connor said, gosh, I think this was on Wednesday, that at that point they had collected 10,000 tons of snow. The next time he talked on Thursday, they said it'd probably be 15,000 by the time you guys are hearing this. Again, tons of snow. Here's Mayor O'Connor talking about how they decide where to focus. I think it's just where we're seeing a gap and where we're seeing, you know, snow pile up in some areas. And, you know, it's piling up everywhere. We're not naive to that. But if there's X amount of square footage where it's piling up towards a business district, towards an intersection where people have to make a right-hand turn, things like your left-hand turn, whatever it might be, I think that's where we're looking at. Major intersections that were clean, but now on the edges they're piling up. One of the points the mayor brings up that is really important and that's been very hotly discussed on Reddit is sort of where to put all of the snow. You have neighborhoods like Bloomfield where every block is tightly packed row houses. There's no tree lawn. There's no yards. There's not really anywhere to put this stuff. People are parking on the street.

Yeah, so one of the things that's come up a lot on Reddit is sort of where to put the snow. And my suggestion actually would be if you have a utility pole or if you have like a shade tree or something that's kind of neutral territory on your sidewalk, that's one place to go. Otherwise, yeah, it's tough on some of these streets. You might just have to give up a parking spot or two. Yeah, I shoveled into the road, which I felt bad about like in a parking spot where. there wasn't a car. Don't shovel onto your neighbor's car because I was doing like my sidewalk, my elderly neighbor, the neighbor on the other side also needed some space. Yeah, thank you. But, you know, I also walk there. It's good for everyone. Everyone should shovel for other people too. And like. Yeah, it sucks that there's one fewer space to park on the road, but also everyone's snow is there now. So you win some, lose some, I guess, with the parking space. This is such a great exercise in organic community building. I mean, seeing people, you know, helping each other up the slopes to ski back down them, seeing people shoveling out each other's cars. It really, I feel like the snow has. It's a greater appreciation for like all kinds of different parking chairs or parking implements, I should say. Oh, yeah. I've seen a whole. kitchen tables outside on the side of the road. Oh, I've seen step ladders. I've seen bar stools. I've seen milk crates. I'm using a Turner's Dairy crate right now as my parking chair. So I feel like that that it's so low to the ground. Like I hope I hope it's respected. That's all. I hope it's respected as well. My neighbors are usually pretty good about that, but we'll see. Fun fact, actually, we put up a social post this week about how this storm compares to previous ones in the city. So just a reminder, depending on where you were, the official count for what we got on Sunday was like somewhere in the neighborhood of like 10 to 14 inches of snow. So put that into context here. One of the big storms that we got once was in 1950 that dropped 27 inches of snow in the city. This was right after Thanksgiving that year. That's like Buffalo levels. I was looking at photos for this. And I found one from the Heinz History Center where they are, it's what I think is a big city vehicle dumping a whole truck's worth of snow into the river. Like you can see our bridges in the background. And so I'd seen what O'Connor had said about how we're, quote unquote, collecting all this snow. And I'm like, wait. Are we still dumping it into the rivers? Where are we putting it? Like if we're not just shoving it to the side, which is what I genuinely assumed we were doing, where are we putting it? Anyway, I asked the city about this. And they said that dumping snow into the rivers was like an established, accepted practice by city officials through at least the 90s, maybe into the early aughts. But we don't do it anymore. We've stopped dumping our nasty snow into the river. Now they put it into sites citywide, like all over. Like they've got one, a DPW venue kind of close to the zoo there in Highland Park, for example. They're using some private property. Like they've got a lot close to Hazelwood Green.

And they're just hauling as much of it as they can to places like this when they're able. And then, of course, when they can't, they're like just pushing it over to the side. So shout out to the mayor's office for answering a query very, very late before we recorded. I was so fascinated by that. So I want to say if they're going to be putting this all in one big spot, they should let us have added. Yeah, we should be able to turn this into like a snow amusement park. During Snowmageddon, I can remember the fifth grader is turning all the piled up snow in our playground into a series of tunnels and slides. I feel like Pittsburgh is missing an opportunity here for like a sort of snow wonderland situation. And Snowmageddon, if you were here for it, again, just to put this in context, that was about 22 inches, so roughly double what we currently have. And in a faster time frame, too. I know. From what I read, like, heavier snow. Like, when I was shoveling out, it was pretty light. I know it's turned to harden now, but shoveling wasn't too rough this weekend. Yeah, we got really delicate powder. It was quite nice, actually. I guess, but that's another problem is that now it is starting to freeze up because it's been compacted. So the city's been putting down a... much salt as it can, but salt doesn't work under a certain temperature. Yeah, I was like researching while I was scrambling to buy salts. Bought it anyway, but I learned that around like 20 degrees Fahrenheit, salt becomes way less effective and starts to really suck when it hits 15 degrees. Which it's been. Yeah, exactly. You could keep dumping more and more on, but like at a certain point, it's kind of like, how much salt do I want to use to see if this will work? Sure. We're looking at negative temps for the next little bit, at least as far as the lows are concerned. We've got some temperatures coming up this week. You know, Saturday it's going to be minus 11. My phone tells me. Sunday, it's going to be minus three. And even the week after that, we're looking at lows in the tens. So it's a kind of situation where I would say overall, if you don't have to drive, it's probably better if you don't. Yeah, definitely. I also. I can't get it out of my brain. There was a story in the Post Gazette this week where they quoted the National Weather Service saying that we're probably not going to see the ground until mid to late February just because of what we're talking about. I've seen headlines that say March now. Seriously? Has it changed? Yeah. Very sad. I mean, I'm hopeful about the roads getting better, obviously, sooner before that. Yeah, the roads will be okay, but like melting a little bit. But usually like during Mardi Gras carnival, like. into St. Patrick's, into Easter. Like, are we going to have a St. Patrick's Day parade that's just covered in snow? We've done it before. Yes, I love it. I didn't, like, look too into it, but like I said, it was mostly headlines on social media. It's March. I'm hoping for early March. I'm definitely not driving anywhere, though, anytime soon. Like you said, Colin, I don't trust myself. I know the buses have had issues, but things are better now. I think everyone should get the transit.

app so you can track the bus instead of waiting in the cold. PRT suspended bus and rail services for a bit on Sunday at the snow's worst. The last time PRRT did this was during Snowmageddon, so it has been a hot minute. But, you know, they shut down service on Sunday afternoon to Monday morning because about 30 buses got stuck in the snow. I'm not surprised. Did you see the videos that day? Like it was wild watching the buses try to navigate that. Like regular cars were slipping and sliding. The buses did not have a chance. Oh, I felt really bad for the 54 going through Polish Hill. There was a video of the 54 just absolutely struggling to get up Haran Avenue. And it just those hills in particular avoid them. as much as you can this time of year. Bus or otherwise, I mean, if you're that heavy of a vehicle and you can't get up, you're definitely not making it up in your civic. And I just keep thinking about like the Fern Hollow photos where like I feel like we haven't had a solid bus calamity, like bus in the snow image in Pittsburgh in a few years now. And I just, I don't want another one, but it just keeps reminding me of all the like bus dangling through a problem. images that we have had in this city over the years. Yeah, yeah. I'm glad we avoided that. So far. So far. I mean, service is mostly back to normal, but I recommend checking the... PRT website because they've been putting out really great updates. As we're recording, like a couple routes, one in Find View, for example, are still down. But the good thing is the T is completely back to normal now because that was out of service for a bit on Wednesday because a power line fell down. So I don't know. Things are slowly getting better, but expect delays, although I would argue that a bus delay in Pittsburgh is normal regardless of snow. Sad but true. I just want to pour one out for all my fellow parents out there. who have been dealing with everything we have just talked about, plus their small children at home or their teenagers at home because of all of the lake, either completely canceled classes, canceled daycares, and now also remote learning because so many of our area school districts are out of snow days already. So now they're required to go to remote learning. Imagine having the days we've just all discussed and also having your child or multiple children at home nagging you every second of the day about it. Just another layer. Yeah, if I were a parent, I would say you're skipping remote learning, go hang out in the snow. Maybe you can just like jiggle the mouse for them while they go build the world's largest snowman outside or something to that effect. Now that's good parenting.

All right, we are switching from snow to ice. Unfortunately, not the winter weather kind. We have been seeing so many Pittsburghers out protesting against what's happening in Minnesota, but also what's happening here. Like, it's nothing like what's happening in Minneapolis, but I just want to... acknowledge what we are seeing happening in our own neighborhoods too. We rounded up how a bunch of officials here locally have been talking about this. We put an article up on our website that's pittsburg.citycast.fm. Some of it's also on Instagram. I encourage you to read more if you want to, but we wanted to run through kind of like what some of our government bodies have been saying about all of this. A lot of them don't have a ton of power, but some of them do. And I think it's useful to kind of level set this and talk about how they're talking about it because it affects all of us. So we'll do city, county, region, state, and federal, kind of in that order. Starting with the city, Mayor O'Connor says that we won't assist ICE. I really encourage you to go back to our podcast last week if you want to hear more about his thoughts on this. But then Pittsburgh City Council this week jumped into the chat too. Yes, city council. So starting in the week earlier, they signed a will of council. And this basically means they all agree on something. Well, everyone who was there. Yes. But all the others. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. So the one thing they agree on is that our Pennsylvania senators, John Fetterman and McCormick, need to reject a federal funding bill that would provide another $10 billion to ICE. This was sponsored by Barb Warwick. Yes, worth saying here, too, like NPR had a story this week noting that ICE is already without this budget bill, the most funded law enforcement agency in the entire U.S. So keep that in the back of your mind as we talk about this. Council also after that did their interviews of our acting public safety director, Sheldon Williams, and the police chief, Jason Lando. This is the thing that they were doing because our last police chief left to go referee NCAA basketball. Now we're going through an interview process where they get to ask them a million questions on the record under oath. With no time limit, right? No time. It went off for over four hours. Oh, my. They just asked them so many things. And a lot of it was repetitious. But I get it. They want to hear on the record what you, how you feel about this and kind of what your intentions are. I did not get the sense that this was in any way going to affect whether they voted yes or no. They all seemed like. They were going to be yes votes. That hasn't happened yet officially. But anyway, among their many questions was how police officers specifically, but public safety generally would interact with ICE. So they wanted Pittsburgh police to review and potentially add to official policy, like putting something in writing about how officers should interact with ICE. They said they don't want Pittsburgh police giving ICE access to Pittsburghers data. Fair minimum. Well, but kind of an aside, like, it's kind of a can of worms because the feds can access all of our data on their own, I think. Like, I'm pretty sure that's how that works. I do respect our counselors for asking about how cooperation will work and, like, putting something in writing, but I'm not sure that something Pittsburgh police are allowed to say no to. Like, I think that might be a policy above their heads. Anyway.

I appreciate the question. They also asked our public safety director, acting director, to come up with a safety plan for if ICE comes here in earnest. But another issue with that, as I understand it, that's sort of fraught for the city to be the person and to be the organizer of it. Because if it's generated through the city, then once again, the feds can snatch it up. and see everything that's written there. So I guess it depends on council's goal. Like as long as you don't mind ICE having access to that safety plan, which maybe they don't. I would mind personally as a resident. So like if you don't want ICE to be able to access that at any point. I think unfortunately that's going to fall on our already probably exhausted organizing community to put together that kind of safety plan, at least as counselors were talking about it. So again, I appreciate where they're coming from. I'm not sure that's something that we even want public safety to be leading exactly. But there was a lot of talk about ICE generally. So like the police chief, acting police chief, Jason Lando just said kind of off the cuff, like just for the record so you guys know to level set. Like I've been an officer. for 20 plus years, I have never needed to ask anyone their immigration status, which kind of was like everybody went silent on that for a second. He said, we have no interest in immigration enforcement as a department, but just reiterating that if Pittsburgh police are called to a crisis, like if ICE. calls 911 for help with something, which they do sometimes, that police have a legal obligation to go and assess the situation. And they require a supervisor to be present. Oh, I don't know that. Okay. Yeah. They want to make sure they got eyes on that and make sure that no one is being hurt. And they're not allowed to ignore any 911 call because then the officers would be federally charged for doing that. We did do a podcast about this about like some of the risks around. what officers can and can't do and what advocates can and can't do in an ICE situation. So we'll link that in the show notes. Y'all, I was screaming at my computer at counsel to ask, well, what if somebody's getting hurt, though? What does Pittsburgh police do then? And nobody asked the question. I was really upset about it. Counselors, if you're listening, our email is Pittsburgh at citycast.fm. Please answer. Jason Landau, if you're listening, what happens if people get hurt? I will say in the absence of a citywide public safety plan, there has been a lot of local organizing around this. I mean, certainly there have been a number of protests. And it was heartening, I think, to see that there were at least 500 people who showed out for a frontline dignity training event on January 20th that was pretty widely reported. So even if, you know, the city's hands are tied on some level, I think Pittsburghers are starting to really prepare themselves and think concretely about what it would look like to respond to ice raids in our community. Totally. And I know frontline dignity is planning more trainings to in February, TBD on exact dates. But if that's something you missed and are interested in, definitely stay tuned to their socials. They've been super active. Absolutely. We'll move on to County.

This is going back a few months, but Sarah and Amarado, our county executive, told county council as early as last summer that these immigration raids have nothing to do with protecting people from criminals. And in our case, threaten the region's long-term growth and stability. As we said, Pittsburgh's growing and it's because of immigrants. Yep, yep, yep. I think that's important. I believe she's also attended some rallies, too. Like, I think I've seen that on her social channels. She certainly seems to have been quite visible in opposing ICE kind of rhetorically speaking. As far as more concrete action at the county level, County Council is now also starting to consider a bill that would bar elected officials and county employees from cooperating with ICE unless they're ordered to by a federal judge. So that bill had six co-sponsors, including Councilor Bethany Hallam, who's been very vocal about criminal justice reform. As of this writing, county code currently only requires officers to provide services or help to people no matter what their immigration status is. So the bill would basically just be a backstop and ban any county officers from making agreements with ICE or have county workers give any resources to ICE. So right now, this is currently in the public safety committee. But public support is very much there. There's a petition circulating that's got over 3,000 signatures. Of note, though, this bill would not. prevent other municipalities in Allegheny County from forming their own agreements, which we've seen in a couple different places. Yeah, I feel like this takes us into the region of it all. Smaller police departments have been making kind of their own choices about all of this. Yeah, we've seen Stowe Township, Springdale Township, have made agreements with working with ICE. Public Source had a really good map of all the agencies that are working with ICE in the area. You know, some of them have ended their cooperation. Coriopolis, which has a big Hispanic population, ended their agreement with ICE after community outcry. But if you look at the counties around Allegheny County. All of their sheriff's offices have signed agreements with ICE. So that's Beaver, Butler, Westmoreland, and Washington all signed on to work with the feds on this. But interestingly, like with some of those, I think what we're seeing play out is that sometimes those sheriff's offices are doing it without the knowledge or consent of their local officials or their voters, their constituents. Like, I think actually this came up in the city council meeting earlier this week, too, talking about like this difference between a warrior mindset and a guardian mindset and that like, at least as it relates to like recruit. and who we're hiring to be part of these organizations. Like, you need a mindset shift so that you're not thinking about it this way. And I think this is exemplative of that. Like, guardians don't want ice in our communities. Warriors, however, I'm not so sure. Well, I mean, if you look at the rhetoric from officials like now former commander at large of ICE, Gregory Bovino, it's been very pugilistic. There's a lot of talk about fighting people. There's a lot of talk about kind of taking control. There was video leaked earlier yesterday that.

showed Bovino talking, basically saying Minneapolis is our city, which as a former resident of the Twin Cities, I don't think is a sentiment shared by very many people there. Yeah, and I believe Bovino was demoted or fired from that office. It's so hard to keep up. Yeah, he's been sent packing back to California, is my understanding. Note here, actually, neither Pittsburgh nor Pennsylvania have official sanctuary policies. You know, that's come up before, too, like what it means to be a sanctuary city. So theoretically, these policies, or I guess often these policies limit local cooperation with ICE, which could include access to, you know, shared databases, personal information, legal proceedings where immigration like ICE. I targets. I hate saying that. We're people. We're human beings might be vulnerable and present. Philadelphia does have a policy like this. Other jurisdictions in Pennsylvania do too. But I think there was some confusion about that because earlier, well, I guess last year now Pittsburgh was listed on a federal sanctuary list. But then it was very quickly removed. But all of this is still very relevant because Trump pledged this month to withhold federal funding from quote unquote sanctuary city. or states having sanctuary cities. So truly no idea what that means or how it could play out or if it's even, I mean, I know he said it, but is it real? Yeah. Well, I guess now that we've mentioned the state, we can move there. Governor Josh Shapiro is getting asked about ice a lot, very understandably. And at a book event over the weekend, he said that his administration is prepared to handle a Minneapolis-style ice occupation in Pennsylvania. I'm not prepared for that. I don't think anyone is individually. I hope that we don't have to answer this question, but... I have heard persistent rumors about ice being sent to Philadelphia. And while we may not have a coordinated plan to handle ice in these cities, I will say I would not feel good as a federal immigration officer going into the city of Philadelphia where they rioted over an NFC championship game. Yeah, when they're happy, they're still causing chaos in a good way. Absolutely. I mean, honestly fair. Josh Shapiro has called ICE agents behavior in Minnesota, quote, lawless, quote, unacceptable. He categorized the recent shooting death of Alex Preti by U.S. Border Patrol as a, quote, atrocity. So, you know, typical Josh Shapiro. He's not being particularly shy about this. And Senate Democrats in the state also want to prohibit immigration arrest, civil immigration ones, within a thousand feet of state-owned property or any leased facilities. If there was a judicial order or a warrant, ICE would be able to arrest people. But we'll see if this actually happens because while the Senate Dems have a proposal, our legislature is split. And, you know, Republicans have controlled the Senate.

They'll probably end up taking this down. Yeah. On that note, speaking of Republican control, our two senators from the state of Pennsylvania, including Republican Dave McCormick and Democrat John Fetterman, have both opposed defunding ICE. Here we go. We're going federal. John Fetterman did do some backtracking this week and called explicitly for the firing of DHS secretary, Kristi Noem. But there still seems to be. some support for ICE funding from his office. And McCormick has been much more in favor of what ICE has been doing while still expressing some skepticism about Kristi Noem. Yeah, and there have been protests this whole week outside Vetterman's office downtown calling on him to reject the funding bill. So that's the one that city council had strong feelings about. And actually, update, breaking as we're recording this, it looks like the Senate did not get enough votes to advance this massive funding bill. McCormick, yeah, more surprises. McCormick, our Republican senator, did vote yes. So that's kind of what was expected of Republicans. But John Fetterman voted no. Really? And eight other Republicans, not McCormick, but eight Republicans defected. They did not vote in favor of this thing. I'm... still just shocked by John Fetterman because he's always said, I will never vote for anything that leads to a shutdown and, like, seems pretty cagey about this. You know what else would avoid a shutdown is compromise? That's true. But he's also come out and said, like, I support ICE, so I just didn't really think that. Well, he said that he didn't support ICE's tactics, but yeah, but in generally, like, funding for ICE. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this doesn't defund them. It just. There doesn't give them more money. It just doesn't give them the extra $10 billion. Definitely not what he was indicating he might do earlier in the week. So I don't know, maybe the protests had an impact. Okay. So keep calling John Fetterman. I guess he, in fact, can be swayed. So let's jump ahead, I guess, stuff that you can do on Friday today as you're hearing this. Yeah, today activists have actually called for a general strike in solidarity with Minnesota. So some of the protests are kind of in concert with that. There will also be a vigil for Alex Preti on Saturday at the Mr. Rogers statue around 530 on the north side. And Megan already mentioned this, but frontline dignity is planning some more trainings around ice. So there's definitely the local activist community remains alert and involved with all of this. And if you have a strong opinion about anything ever, you can always call your legislators, call your senators. The app five calls has been getting a lot of press lately, rightly so, because it does make it very easy. You can find who your representatives are quickly. They offer scripts for things that you can use or not use. If you disagree with literally everything we've been talking about, you can share that too. Like, as a voter, it is your right to be able to do this. And you should be able to exercise that.

And one more time, I want to throw to our article. You can find it at pittsburg.citycast.fm. And, you know, besides what elected officials say, we have a lot of great information about local groups if you want to support people doing rapid response or immigrant communities in any ways or even like food distributions. There's a lot of ways you can be helping our neighbors right now. There's so much good guidance out there. Like for union stewards, for small business owners, whether you're an immigrant or you employ immigrants, like ways to protect yourself and be thinking about this and also be a safe space for people or create environments that limit risk, things like that. Like there's just so much good stuff there. Can't encourage you to check it out enough. Link in the show notes if you want to learn more. Time for our CityCast Pittsburgh neighbor shoutouts. This is our membership program. And if you become a member of CityCast Pittsburgh, one of our neighbors, then you get to say nice things about a thing you love in the city. And you can even shout out multiple businesses like Courtney C. We're bringing her shoutouts today. And she wants to send some love to Pips by a mill, a mill as an A-M-I-L, and then happy little canvases and Zen Spire Design. So all of these are local artists and they all have online shops. So you can go check them out right now within the comfort of your home. And some of them have Valentine's Day theme stuff going on right now. So you. Don't have a gift yet. Now is your time to get one. Thank you so much, Courtney. Yeah, I can confirm Francesca, our newsletter editor here at CityCast, a big fan of happy little canvases. Might be a big fan of all of the ends, but definitely shares her stuff quite a lot. And again, if you want to shout out your favorite local business, nonprofit, you can get really specific and submit like a specific dish to your own business. We've had several of those. And we commend you. Thank you for supporting us. We will support you in kind. Yes, yes. Because of a citycast Pittsburgh neighbor and we'll read your shout out right here. You also get other perks like ad-free listening and access to members-only events. So you can join today at membership.citycass.fm. Yeah, we're planning one right now. There might be a food component. I'm pretty excited about it. Like if we get to like let people try some food, that's going to be fun. Yes. And a big, big welcome to our newest neighbors, Elizabeth B. Allen O. Alex P. Kenneth M. Lori S. Rich V. and Linda C. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Thanks, Tingens. So we'll move on now to wins, losses. Things to know this week. We'll start with the Steelers. We have a new head coach. So Mike Tomlin voluntarily resigned on his own, made a big splash. She was with the team for 19 years, very successful at the beginning. Less so in recent years. And now we got a new guy.

I feel like there are going to be a lot of Pittsburgh fans right now who are the dogs that finally caught the proverbial car. They've been calling for Tomlin's head on a Graham Platner for years now because of Tomlin's inability to win a playoff since 2016. And now we have Greenfield native Mike McCarthy coming to the helm. Do people like him? I'm going to guess mixed if Megan set this up at the beginning with some people are going to consider a loss. But I guess do you two like him is what I want to know. So I consider this to be a win because Pittsburgh sports fans are finally getting what they want. And I'm going to make them take that W. And as far as anything else is concerned with McCarthy, I mean, he, you know, he. Talks the talk. He walks the walk. He's from here. But I also think... He was a coach in Dallas, though. It's just sort of a Cardinal sin for an old school Pittsburgh fan. And his only Super Bowl victory came at our expense. So there is maybe some reason for bad blood there. But I will say... To me, the signals that the Roonies want to win now. I expect McCarthy will get a shorter runway than somebody like Tomlin. Well, he's also older. He's 62. Like usually the Steelers hire young guys that stay with us forever. Yeah. What's the usual age for coaches to retire? Like how many years are we expecting him to be here? It depends on whether you win, Sophia. Okay, okay. Yeah. Yeah, what some people have quipped that the... NFL, what is the quote I saw yesterday? In any case, it is a well-known fact that coaches' seats are always a little bit warm and often quite hot, and they are not in them for very long. Just ask the Browns how that goes. Truly. McCarthy signed a five-year contract, so, you know, that's not a full guarantee or anything, but it does give us a little bit of like... an expectation that he'll be around at least that long. I'll link in the show notes a little press conference that he did talking about like how much Pittsburgh means to him. I got to say. My feed was more on the side of disappointment than joy when he was first announced. Actually, counter to what you said, Colin, that they think that this is the Rooney's, like, not even trying anymore, that they're just like, we don't even care. Like, the old era's dead. I hope they're wrong. And I feel better about it after having seen his, like, fairly emotional press conference. You can tell this man grew up in Pittsburgh, at least a little bit. because of how he talks about Pittsburgh. I wasn't prepared for that. Like, I didn't realize that that was coming in. So he's almost a little weepy about coming back home. He even quips that his family members can now wear their black and gold with pride and they don't have to be ashamed of it anymore. So you can tell the family is all invested. Yeah. Yeah. It made me feel better about things. For the people who care about such things, Ben Rothlisberger was on his podcast this week talking about how great it is. So.

There's that too. Colin, I know you are, I don't know if excited's the word. You have thoughts about a parking lot proposal for Woolies in the strip district. Yes, this is, I will chalk this up to a big fat L for this week. It has kind of resurfaced again that the long rumored development that they spent $2 million in state funding to demolish the Woolies warehouse for is now slated to instead of becoming a. an office high rise. It is slated to become a surface parking lot, which in my opinion is the absolute last thing we need in the strip. But it also feels very in keeping with some of the yimbi nimbi debates that have been going on around the bike lanes and all of that stuff. So the strip district remains contested territory for pro development people and folks who are thinking a little more holistically. Where are we talking about exactly? Because like it's not Woolies, the grocery store. No, this is the Woolies warehouse next to the Lucky's Bar that is located on. Oh, that thing that took forever to demolish. Yeah. So they took a long time millions of dollars to demolish this. This is my favorite demolition Pittsburgh has had in years because Lucky's Bar disputed it successfully. So they had to spend all this extra money to slowly pick apart all the walls beside Lucky's without damaging their property. It was hilarious to watch. There's a term for this actually in mainland China. They call these nail houses that when the government proceeds with large projects, they stick out like a nail. And Lucky's is very much like a spite house or a nail house here in the middle of the strip district. But this is, I mean, a surface parking lot in one of the densest areas in the city is kind of a travesty. And that spot is actually zoned golden triangles. So theoretically, it could support a skyscraper if they wanted it to. And instead that they're putting in 150 parking spots. I don't love the parking spot thing, but I understand why they're not building on high-rise four offices right now because we keep seeing headlines pop over and over and over again about how no one's leasing them. Like they're just, and that's the issue with our property tax situation downtown. Like we've got all these high rises that aren't worth as much anymore. So the city can't collect enough property taxes. And it's all because businesses don't need that kind of office space in a post-COVID world. Could be houses, though. Or like apartments. Or like multi-bedroom units that don't cost a half a million dollars. That would be ideal. Yeah, yeah. One more from you, Colin. You went to a press conference this morning. You're moving and shaken. I did go to a press conference this morning. The Pittsburgh Alliance for People Empowered Reporting has arisen from the chaos after the announced closure of the Post Gazette. AKA paper, because that's helpful. Yes, that's true. So paper is basically a, as it currently exists, is a research body that is actively looking at next steps for Pittsburgh media, including potentially a worker-owned outlet, a co-op outlet, or a nonprofit newsroom to succeed the Post-Gazette. So I, along with the Pittsburgh News Guild and a number of other community members have been involved in these discussions, making suggestions about different models that are out there, thinking about sort of who important stakeholders are that maybe have not been a part of these discussions before. So I'm excited to see what this group can do, particularly now that there has been interest in.

potentially purchasing the PG and lots of community support, certainly behind an outlet that is accountable to somebody other than a widely disliked millionaire family. Yeah, Alan and J.R. Block. Yeah, and this is separate, we should say, from some of the stuff we talked about this time last week with the efforts from Kevin Acklin and others who was. a big wig in the Paduto administration and worked at the Penguins for a while. He's now an attorney at a prominent law firm. It seems like he's trying to negotiate something where the blocks either sell or allow for nonprofit management of the Post Gazette's brand its assets, the whole thing. It sounds like paper isn't counting on that. And also, I mean, are they in favor of something like that, too? Has that come up? I will say that paper has communicated with Acklin and he expressed a willingness to work with the union. So what nature that is, I think, remains to be seen. I mean, particularly this week, as you saw some of the other Post-Gazette newsroom folks kind of expressed their disappointment with the guild. Last week. There's still kind of a lot of plates in the air. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, that was all last Thursday that a bunch of that stuff popped. Definitely check out our episode for last Friday. If you want to get the short rundown, anyway. Where does the time go? I know. Well, I've got another fun win. It's about Legos, but I promise this connects to Pittsburgh. So there's a Lego ideas creator, Chris 74. This person made a model of Pittsburgh in Lego form. What are Lego ideas? So Lego ideas are like products that anyone can just sort of make up. You can design your own Lego and then it goes to... the supporter stage, which is what this Pittsburgh model is in right now. Legos has its own incubator program. Yeah, yeah. Like anyone can just submit an idea. I mean, you need like pictures and stuff. You're not just writing like I would like Pittsburgh. So here, I'll send you the link. You can see Pittsburgh. It's like a two scale model of downtown. It looks very cool. There is like the rubber duck that visited in the river, all that kind of stuff. Is there a flap on one of the streets so that you can have the bus fall into the sinkhole? That's what we really. We should talk to Chris 74 and see if he can make a sort of trap door. In the description, it does say sinkhole bus. I'm not seeing it in the pictures, but maybe I just don't have the right angle. There's a few of them. I was going to say the single bus would be just out of frame here on the left. If indeed it's here. Yeah. But I hope the single butts makes it into the final design. But we all need to help Chris 74 get it to Lego. So you need 10,000 supporters for Lego to consider the idea. And then they're going to decide if it's. possible to make into an actual Lego set. So right now, Chris 74 is about halfway there, but anyone can just go and support the idea. All you do, we'll have the link in our show notes. You do need to create a Lego account, but like all you need to do is hit a thumbs up. Like, it's super easy. And if you make a Lego account, you can get a discount when this hopefully gets made. So everyone go do that. Wait, just for this? Or for any Legos. For any Legos. I have a Lego account. I love getting Lego points. Okay. Yeah. All right. This is an easy sell for me. Yeah. I mean, it's like when they made Pittsburgh Monopoly. Like, that stuff was everywhere. I loved it. But Monopoly sucks. Legos rock.

Hot take. One more to close us out. If you enjoy celebrating – actually, this feels right on par with the last one. If you enjoy celebrating people from here, the city, it's visage, the whole thing. The Walk of Fame folks, that thing that they did last year with Michael Keaton and all that in the strip district, they are currently taking nominees for their next 10 folks that they're going to have here. My money is in every way on Jeff Goldblum because they got to get a celebrity here. That was part of the – Michael Keaton thing to be able to get like a ton of press and everything. I think it's so fun. Like I love the stars in the concrete. I adore it. But if you want to submit nominations, that's only that closes today, actually. So you have today. It's the last day. I'm trying to think about who else could go on there that hasn't been on the list already. There's got to be some good suggestions out there that haven't been floated. And, you know, everyone on the CityCast Pittsburgh team also made suggestions for the Walk of Fame what it first got announced last year. So if you're interested in the Pittsburghers we love and we want recognition for it, we'll have the link in our show notes for that as well. And maybe you can help us out and submit them too. I'm sure more people submitting the same person is going to maybe get them a little higher in the ranks.

That's all for today here on CityCast Pittsburgh. Our music is by Los Mocococetes, Aaron Taylor Waldman, all the kimonos, Mooncrest, bagel, and Brian Curtin with additional mixing by Tyler Lindgren. Mallory Falk is our executive producer. Sophia Lowe and Elizabeth Kama produced the show this week. And I'm your host, Megan Harris. We'll be back on Monday with more from around the city. Have a great weekend, y'all. If Jeff Goldblum comes, I'm going in full cosplay as something. I'm going to go as the fly. I mean, people were screaming Batman at Michael Keaton. And every single time, he was like, yeah, man, like just fist in the air.