The City Controller’s office released the Popular Annual Financial Report for 2016. It is essentially a boiled down and condensed version of the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report and highlights the duties of the City’s elected officials, its departments, major financial highlights (where the money comes from, where the money goes), capital projects, fiscal distress and oversight. The Controller’s website has the reports going back to 2009 online.
The PAFR since that year has showed “challenges ahead” for the City. Every year, from 2009 through 2015, the three challenges were population, pensions, and infrastructure. In short, attracting population, funding pensions, and maintaining and improving infrastructure were three major issues/challenges according to the City Controller’s office. For 2016, the city’s water issues replaced population as one to the three main challenges. Whether that means the Controller’s office feels like population is no longer an issue or that the water system woes have supplanted it is not known. Back in the winter the Controller’s office released a performance audit of the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority.