Mayor Corey O\u2019Connor says Pittsburgh\u2019s financial problems are worse than expected. <\/p>\n
Mayor O\u2019Connor says the city faces a $250 million budget gap over the next five years.<\/p>\n
He tells KDKA Radio\u2019s Marty Griffin the financial picture is worse than expected, calling it \u201cdeath by a thousand cuts.<\/p>\n
\u201cFive-hundred thousand here, a million here, eight-million here and it just adds up over time,\u201d said O\u2019Connor.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor didn\u2019t directly blame the previous administration under Ed Gainey but said his administration\u2019s projections are showing different numbers.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor is calling on City Council to act.<\/p>\n
The city could also face a $30 million deficit this year, despite 70 million dollars in nonprofit donations. councilwoman barb Warwick says those donations are not guaranteed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have these commitments now, and that\u2019s great, it\u2019s a little bit, but it\u2019s clearly not enough,\u201d said Warwick. \u201cWe need to know that we have funding we can count on every single year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warwick was raising taxes isn\u2019t the answer and is pushing for changing the city tax code that would increase property taxes in small increments (1 or 2 percent) a year. <\/p>\n
The $250 million deficit is about two times more than the city’s current rainy-day fund. <\/p>\n
One reason for the red ink is the Gainey administration underestimated city spending and overestimated tax revenue. <\/p>\n
O’Connor says every area of spending will be reviewed. A balanced budget must be submitted to council by September 30. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Corey O\u2019Connor says Pittsburgh\u2019s financial problems are worse than expected. Mayor O\u2019Connor says the city faces a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[222,20313,116960,73,75,74],"class_list":["post-279562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-budget","tag-budget-deficit","tag-corey-o-connor","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279562","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=279562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}