As the Post-Gazette reports it, Pittsburgh Water (the old Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority) has filed for a massive rate increase to “catch up” with its ageing system.
The agency is asking the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission for a 33 percent rate hike. If approved, the increase would be implemented over two years beginning in 2026.
“If the request were granted in full, the average residential monthly bill would increase from $100.27 to $123.02 in 2026 and $135.49 in 2027,” the P-G reports.
A 16 percent increase took effect in early 2024.
Hey, here’s an idea: Why not, by law, prohibit the sale of the public water system to a private entity to prevent massive rate increases?
Yeah, that’s the ticket, eh?
In the City of Pittsburgh’s latest effort to make the ‘Burgh a welcoming city to all – Ahem – it is doubling the cost of residential parking permits from $20 a year to $40 annually.
That’s a 100 percent increase.
And also effective July 1, it is raising the cost of a visitor residential parking pass from $1 to $10, a 900 percent increase.
As the P-G reports it:
“Parking permits are required for extended parking in certain city neighborhoods and are aimed to ‘preserve resident parking in areas in close proximity to commercial zones,’ according to the parking authority website.
“However, permits don’t guarantee residents a parking space near their home.”
Gee, what’s next, say an annual “fee” that “preserves” taxpayer-funded grocery stores but doesn’t guarantee those taxpayers can shop there?
Here’s a timely memo to the Pittsburgh Steelers and Pittsburgh Pirates:
The Wall Street Journal reports that Chicago’s Major League Soccer club – the Chicago Fire — has reached a deal to self-finance a new $650 million downtown stadium.
Team owner Joe Mansueto, founder of the financial-data firm Morningstar, said all the political machinations associated with seeking public financing would unnecessarily slow down the project.
The private project came to the forefront after the Chicago White Sox’s proposal for a $1billion new stadium met political pushback, The Journal notes.
The White Sox were in the running for a project on the same site that still is designed to have an ancillary mixed-use development – retail, business and “affordable housing” — around it.
Exactly how that associated development will be funded remains up in the air.
But as The Journal also reminds:
“Economists have lambasted stadium-based districts for using taxpayer money and then ultimately funneling the development’s profits to the sports teams rather than local businesses.”
Gee, that should sound painfully familiar to Pittsburghers, right? For we all know about our professional sports teams eating their cake and having it, too.
And crazy-kid public policy analysts that we are, here’s a hilarious idea:
How about selling individiual parcels of land to the respective highest bidders and allow the marketplace to determine what’s built around the new White Sox stadium?
We can almost guarantee that the result will be a better and highly eclectic mix of a business district — not a perverted pre-planned attempt at Utopia from the the usual command “economists.”
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
