PITTSBURG — It was a “State of the City” presentation, after all, so positivity was the order of the day. City leaders on June 22 had a tidy list of recent accomplishments and future plans, even if the city faces notable budget constraints in the near term.
“We’re doing more with less, and we’re going to make it work,” said Assistant City Manager Garrett Evans, one of four presenters at the annual presentation, in front of about 200 people at the Pittsburg Elks lodge.
While the city’s overall 2017-18 budget is $200.7 million, up from $192.5 million in 1026-27, the general fund budget is set to go down 3.7 percent in 2017-18, from $40.65 million to $39.14 million. Pittsburg, and many other cities, face paying more money to the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) for employee and retiree pensions, thanks to a CalPERS funding shortfall. That has resulted in some budget cuts for 2017-18, a topic of discussion at a recent city budget workshop.
That said, Evans and others shared some good numbers out of Pittsburg. The local unemployment rate dropped in 2016 from 4.8 percent the previous year to 4.3 percent, Evans said, and the rates of both new housing starts and new business permits have been steadily rising (as has the total number of business licenses in the city). “From a jobs perspective, the community is humming at a really good rate,” Evans said.
City Manager Joe Sbranti said a subtle but telling number is 323 — the number of solar energy permits issued in Pittsburg during 2016. “That’s a sign that people think there’s a long-term future here for them,” he said.
In 2016, there were 158 single-family homes starts, plus more than 200 new apartment units — not overwhelmingly large numbers, Sbranti said, but manageable, and spread throughout the city. Many of them are “infill” projects.
Other positive items in Pittsburg this year cited at the June 22 presentation include:
* The reopening this year of Fire Station No. 87, which had shut down in July 2013 amid budget cuts.
* Progress on the James Donlon extension — also known as the “Buchanan Bypass” — is gaining momentum, and almost 90 percent of the money needed to build it is in hand, Sbranti said he’s confident the last 10 percent won’t be as hard to get. “Once you’ve got 90 percent of the funding, the politicians will fall all over themselves looking for that money so they can be in the ribbon-cutting photos,” Sbranti joked.
* A recent $4.4 million grant for Pittsburg’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Pedestrian Bicycle Connectivity Project, which will fund bike lanes on local streets, designed to make it easier for bicyclists to get to the new Railroad Avenue BART station;
* That new BART station, expected to open in 2018
* Pittsburg was at the forefront in 2016 of the move to install cameras aimed at Highway 4 to help deter freeway shootings, and will be the nerve center of an expanded camera system that will include Highway 4 from Bay Point into Antioch but also Highway 242 in Concord and parts of Interstate 80 in West Contra Costa.
* While almost 300 violent crimes were reported in Pittsburg in 2016, up from about 225 the previous year, Pittsburg saw declines of every other major category of crime in 2016, police Chief Brian Addington said. Property crimes were down almost 20 percent from 2015, and “Part I” crimes (essentially violent crimes combined with property crimes) were down about 15 percent from 2015.
Addington attributed part of the jump of violent crimes directly to the 2014 passage of Assembly Bill 47, which reduced some state inmates’ felony convictions to misdemeanors, putting more parolees on streets all over California. As for the other lower numbers, Addington credited “great pro-activity” on the part of his officers working to prevent crime, and a community that supports those efforts.
