My Bio
I have been fighting public corruption for over 4 decades and working on important City issues for over 35 years.
● As the Executive Director of the North Area Environmental Council, I revitalized an organization that was ready to close its doors. In my 18 months there, I started 5 areas of programming and the organization continued operations for 35 more years.
● I founded E Watch, a volunteer monitoring undertaking which assisted environmental agencies and citizen efforts.
● I co-founded and was project director of The American Town & Country Alliance, a Tides Center Project, during which I initiated the Citizen Advisory Panel of the Southwestern PA Regional Planning Commission.
● As the eventual Chair of the CAP of SPRPC, I uncovered and pursued massive public corruption and falsifications used to take 40% of federal money needed to maintain the existing infrastructure to subsidize real estate speculation.
● I fought the takeover by corporate interests of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and helped stop their attempt to close several branch libraries. I created PittsburghFree.Net and have hosted public interest websites for free through it for over 20 years after the Library canceled its Three Rivers Free-Net.
● I have organized and led court cases to expose and stop the fraudulent use of $326 million in federal funding on the Airport Busway, taking the case to the PA Supreme Court and US Appeal Court. I organized and led a legal battle to save the historic Greater Pittsburgh Airport terminal building, once the largest airport in the world for its first 20 years, taking the case as high as the US Supreme Court.
● I created the Pittsburgh Area New Direction Alternative (PANDA) and PANDApage.org as a platform of proposals for new challenging candidates for public office to use with their campaigns.
● I wrote and organized an effort for the proposed Open Government Amendment to the Pittsburgh City Charter, only to have the mayor get a judge to remove it from the ballot a day before they went to print so we could not get it back on appeal.
● I have extensive experience with bottom-up efforts for better governance, assisting a number of citizen efforts over the years.
● I am a 20 year member and participant with the Black Political Empowerment Project (B-PEP) to get African-Americans to vote in each and every election. I am a more recent member of the Pittsburgh NAACP.
● I have a history of not having the wool pulled over my eyes and doggedly pursuing justice for those not able to do so by themselves.
My Key Issues
Community Advisory Team (CAT)
The CAT process is designed to enable average citizens to proactively participate in the governance of their community. It can serve as a two-way conduit for communication between those governing and the governed. By maximizing transparency through putting concerned people in the middle of the governing process, better public policy that promotes the public welfare can result.
Neighborhood Integrated Services Teams (NISTs)
By bringing all the public service providers together at the table at regular intervals (Vancouver, BC does it every 2 weeks), nothing can fall through the cracks by claiming someone somewhere else is responsible. This is one half of my Dept of Neighborhoods proposal.
Rapid Rail connection between the City and the Airport
Pittsburgh is one of the few (if not the only) major metropolitan area without a rail connection between the city and its airport. Money was squandered 30 years ago on a half completed busway project so a real estate speculator could make millions selling an unused right-of-way. That money could have built a rapid rail connection then but didn't, so we must push for it now. At a 10 minutes journey, passengers would be closer to their plane in the city than in the airport parking lot.
Making public parks public again, run by the Parks Dept.
Several decades ago, the park maintenance was assigned to the Dept of Public Works whose employees were not trained in how to treat the parks. Since then a private organization has taken over operations of parks facilities, treating them in cases as private property for affluent residents use. This splitting of the Parks Dept.'s traditional role has resulted in trifrucating the parks management and their deterioration. Steps need to be taken to return full control and management of the parks to the public Parks Department.
Send Me a Message
Have questions or suggestions? I would love to hear from you!