Like another erstwhile Burgh blogger, I was appointed a month or two ago as a member of the Mayor’s Propel Pittsburgh Commission. Today, we had our first meeting for about 1.75 hours Downtown. The official bylaws of the Commission say that we’re not supposed to reveal Commission business to the media without the Chair’s permission (that’d be the Mayor), so I’m going to confine myself to vague generalities. Suffice it to say that like all first meetings of task forces, this one was mostly administrivia. We introduced ourselves, adopted bylaws, reviewed a bit of preliminary data, and spent a lot of time debating what subcommittees we should have.

That aside, I will say that today’s meeting leaves me with some cautious optimism. Mayor Ravenstahl opened the meeting and moderated a lot of the discussion, and he didn’t appear to be playing politics with it. He came in with no preconceived notions about what we should/shouldn’t do, made no mention of his rivals or of elections in general, and did not toss around rhetoric. He could easily have been just another City staffer instead of our chief executive, and generally made himself very low-key and approachable. Your humble correspondent was duly impressed, and takes from this the message that Mr. Ravenstahl is serious about soliciting ideas and following through on them. It’s a good group for generating ideas, too. We’re definitely heavy on the professional class (law, business, nonprofit, social studies, a few engineers), but they did a good job with diversity — my guess is that the room was only about 50% white, and it wasn’t confined to the usual suspects from the East End. By my recollection, at least half the people were involved in some kind of neighborhood improvement initiative, and almost all of us served on some kind of board or were running a business in the City.

Now, it’s a government advisory commission, and like all such creatures, Propel Pittsburgh may end up just producing reports that sit on a shelf. On the other hand, the people in that room represent a lot of connections. Moreover, there’s one person on there from each City Council member, so we’ve at least got the start of an ability to lobby Council for the changes we might find necessary. Keep your fingers crossed, and watch this space for updates; I intend to seek as much community input as possible once we start considering major questions.

Related posts:

1. Propel Pittsburgh: if you build it, will they come?
2. Remember Propel Pittsburgh?
3. I was thinking about leaving, but I just love commissions so much
4. New ideas
5. Happy Birthday Patrick Dowd