City finances are in good shape, with an anticipated surplus by year’s end and money on hand for capital projects, said the city controller — adding that a tax increase to fund parks would be unfair to residents.
At a Monday press conference announcing the 2018 Popular Annual Financial Report — the city finance report for “non-accountants and the layperson” — City Controller Michael Lamb reiterated that tax revenue has increased and that “for the first time” the city has a plan to fund legacy pensions.
The popular version of the report is now available online and in hard copy at the Controller’s Office on the first floor of the City-County Building, Downtown.
Mr. Lamb released the more complicated 177-page Comprehensive Annual Financial Report in May.
Payroll preparation, deed transfer, real estate and earned income taxes, as well as some others, were up by approximately $29 million in 2018 compared to 2017.
And while the city is on pace in 2019 to “see a significant surplus” with all tax categories either on pace or outperforming where they were last year, the controller opposes any future tax increase.
The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, with support from Mayor Bill Peduto, is looking to add a question to the November ballot that would ask residents to fund parks via a real estate tax increase.
“Until UPMC, Highmark, Pitt and CMU and the large nonprofits [are] contributing their fair share, I don’t see how we can go back to our taxpayers and ask them for more money,” Mr. Lamb said.
Additionally, he said, “there are significant capital dollars available and unspent right now.”
Mr. Lamb is referring to the $26 million the city transferred in 2018, and $15 million in 2019, from the general fund to capital projects; only $16.3 million has been spent.
“There’s more money in the capital budget right now than we as a city have the capacity to spend,” he said. “… To me, it’s really a prioritization kind of issue.”
The mayor’s office maintains that those funds are “dwindling” and that “some 140 neighborhood parks [are] suffering from years of neglect,” said Timothy McNulty, mayoral spokesman.
As for where the taxpayers’ money went in 2018, the largest expenditure was on public safety, according to the report.
Fifty-four percent of the city’s general fund was spent on police, fire, EMS and Animal Control last year, and Mr. Lamb attributes that to “providing a government on a day-to-day basis for a much larger population than the population that actually lives here.”
Overall spending increased by 9.8% in 2018 due to overall government administration costs and increases in the Public Safety and Public Works departments.
Meanwhile, the city spent $78.9 million in capital projects last year. The largest amounts went to the $27.5 million purchase of the former Art Institute building on the Boulevard of the Allies and $15.8 million for roughly 60 miles of paving — “still not where we need to be, but a significant increase,” Mr. Lamb said.
The city also spent $5.4 million on improving city-owned facilities, $3.2 million on remediating condemned buildings and $2.9 million on fixing failing slopes and hillsides.
Concerns going forward continue to be the city’s aging infrastructure and the pension fund, Mr. Lamb said.
Mr. Peduto in early June called to divest the city’s pension funds from fossil fuels, for-profit prisons and firearms and ammunition manufacturers.
Mr. Lamb said the two will meet in the fall to discuss the idea.
“As an investment vehicle in the long term, I actually think it would make a lot of sense. I think over future years, purely fossil fuel companies will be less profitable,” Mr. Lamb said. “... But regardless of what policy objective we set out, the first responsibility of the trustees is their fiduciary obligation to the fund.”
Ashley Murray: 412-263-1750, amurray@post-gazette.com or on Twitter @Ashley__Murray
First Published: July 1, 2019, 9:58 p.m.
