took $1 million<\/a> from a cancelled transit project to pay for renovations.<\/p>\nBut according to City Councilor Barb Warwick, even as work on the center nears completion, it lacks the funding needed for it to open this year. The community organizations that have provided services there are struggling to operate on tight budgets, she says. Without city support, the building will remain closed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe school year will be starting before we know it,\u201d Warwick said. \u201cIt is my priority to ensure that the kids in Glen Hazel have access to a safe place to go after school, to do homework, to get food, to have fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warwick put forward a bill last month that would take $200,000 from the city\u2019s Stop the Violence trust fund to fund social-services programming at the center. Part of her goal, she said, was to ensure neighborhoods like Hazelwood have the same opportunities as other neighborhoods. Her own children, she noted, have access to free after-school programs in nearby Greenfield.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a citywide issue. There are multiple council members at this table who have programs just like this, operating small nonprofits on shoestring budgets,\u201d she said. \u201cMaybe they’re relying on a retiree that’s just being a hero for the community. But that’s not how it’s supposed to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Councilors initially seemed skeptical of the proposal when Warwick introduced it in June, and asked how other recreation centers in similar situations should be funded. Stymied by those objections, Warwick held the bill for two weeks and invited Hazelwood residents to speak at Council about their hopes for the center.<\/p>\n
Several community members did so Wednesday, urging Council during its public-comment period to fund programs at Burgwin.<\/p>\n
Lauren Coursey, of the Hazelwood Initiative community development corporation, said funding the rec center would help provide young people with options for how to spend their time, at a moment when city leaders are voicing heightened concerns about youth activity.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo many kids from the neighborhood, as well as from neighboring communities, come to use the spray park attached to the rec center,\u201d Coursey said. \u201cFunding the rec center would mean out-of-school activities in a neighborhood where there is no movie theater, no arcade, and very few third spaces for children and teens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aceton Hill, a 10-year-old Hazelwood resident, and his mother, Denise Johnson, expressed similar concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids are running the streets and doing whatever they think they want,\u201d Hill said. \u201cThere’s only a couple camps and after-schools.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see what’s going on every day out in the streets. After-school programs, we have a couple, but it’s not enough to serve Hazelwood,\u201d said Johnson, who said she worries Hazelwood has been \u201cforgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n
James Cole, program director with POORLAW, a local organization that has provided many of the center\u2019s community services, said the group needs support to keep making those services available to the neighborhood. He said he had spent a lot of his own money to keep the programs going, and had to get an additional job.<\/p>\n
\u201cWealthier neighborhoods get the funding \u2026 to have an after-school program and summer camp, but the underserved neighborhoods aren’t getting the same monies to do this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Councilors seemed more amenable Wednesday to the idea of finding some way to fund Burgwin than they had been when the issue first surfaced last month. Several wanted to determine whether a formal request for proposals or some other funding structure would be the best way to help the center, but none expressed opposition to supporting Burgwin.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m committed to finding, or helping you find, or getting approved the funding so this place can continue to operate,\u201d said Councilor Anthony Coghill. \u201cIt seems like a really great place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warwick, meanwhile, voted to hold off on a vote for another two weeks, an effort to give Mayor Corey O\u2019Connor\u2019s administration more time to come up with next steps. She said Wednesday that she had spoken with O\u2019Connor, Chief of Staff Dan Gilman and Parks and Recreation Director Eric Sloan about the center, and that they \u201cexpressed that they’re on board to work toward a solution.\u201d With that two-week delay, the earliest Council could vote on the bill is July 22.<\/p>\n
The mayor\u2019s office did not respond to a request for comment on the issue. But Warwick expressed optimism that funding Burgwin could be a start to making youth programs more available in other parts of town.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll kids in Pittsburgh deserve safe, effective after-school and summer programming [and] out-of-school programming all across the city,\u201d Warwick said. \u201cIt’s not something that we’re going to be able to fix overnight, but I am glad that we are talking about the issue in a really meaningful way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Neighborhood advocates and several Pittsburgh City Councilors say they want to provide after-school programming at a freshly-renovated rec…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-238717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}