Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato unveiled Wednesday the results of a wide-ranging resident survey, along with an accompanying action plan with 91 “concrete steps” that county officials plan to take in the coming months and years, in an effort to improve county services.

Ms. Innamorato and her administration spent months going to various meetings throughout the county, along with soliciting responses to the survey from more than 18,800 residents on a wide range of issues including economic development, education, health and human services, housing, infrastructure and public safety.

Now, it’s time to implement policies to reflect the answers, the county executive said.

“We need to just not talk about it, not just have the data, but we need to act,” Ms. Innamorato said at a presentation of the “All In Allegheny” survey results and action plan at Community College of Allegheny County’s Allegheny campus.

Her plan to implement the priorities she gleaned from the survey’s responses contains 91 steps or actions, some of which are closer to being realized than others.

One has a definite start date: In June, all residents ages 18 to 65 who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, along with their children, can receive 50% off Pittsburgh Regional Transit fares. Full fare is $2.75 per ride.

Others, Ms. Innamorato said, will be coming in the near term, including a program whereby trained mental health professionals will respond to mental health 911 calls, in a partnership with the county’s emergency services agency, the Allegheny Housing Authority, and the police departments in McKees Rocks, Penn Hills and Monroeville. County officials will be finalizing that in the next few months, she said.

Ms. Innamorato was blunt about new development, especially housing: “It's time to retire that knee-jerk nimbyism, about protecting property values and start embracing all types of housing in all of our neighborhoods across Allegheny County,” she said, noting that county officials will launch a new program to make hundreds of permanent, affordable housing units available to people exiting homelessness.

There also are more long-term goals that Ms. Innamorato said she would like to accomplish in her first term. One of them, according to the plan, is to create interactive dashboards on county websites, containing everything from county road and bridge conditions, property information, and air quality, among other data.

The 91 actions in the plan constitute a road map for Ms. Innamorato’s broader policy goals in her first four years as the county’s top elected official.

Her likely highest priority, she said, was continuing to invest in her county employees. During her speech, she highlighted her first 100 days in office, including her decision to raise wages and increase benefits for nonunion county workers.

“We can’t deliver on these promises to the community if we aren’t investing in our workforce, and ensuring that people who work for the county have a high quality of life and meaningful work to do,” Ms. Innamorato told reporters.

Sam DeMarco, an at-large County Council member and chair of the county's GOP committee, said in an interview that while he may agree or disagree with certain aspects of the plan, there's one glaring issue: How the county will pay for the goals.

In an era where there are reduced tax revenues from Downtown high-rise office buildings and a potential county reassessment, that's concerning, he said.

"It’s a wish list. Some of the stuff may be good, but there’s no price tag associated with it," Mr. DeMarco said. "How are they going to pay for it?"

While describing her meetings around the county in recent months, Ms. Innamorato got emotional describing a note she got about one attendee who had hours cut at work and thus couldn’t afford rent. That resident had to live out of their car, she said.

It’s not just building trust with those residents, but also that those people are going to hold county government accountable for delivering solutions, she said.

County officials said the survey and action plan represent an attempt to serve residents who have otherwise been disenfranchised or not fully supported, like that person living out of their car.

“We were intentional about engaging people whose voices are not usually the loudest in these conversations about county priorities,” said Lauren Connelly, the county’s incoming economic development director and co-chair of All in Allegheny, a committee on Ms. Innamorato’s transition team that helped craft the survey.

In addition to the initiatives listed in the plan, Ms. Innamorato also needs to fill senior-level executive positions in her administration. Along with the county manager role, she shared Wednesday that county officials were interviewing finalists for a director of climate resilience, a sustainability director, and other jobs within her office. Officials are beginning interviews with “strong candidates” for the county’s health director, she said.

Ms. Innamorato told reporters that a search for a new jail warden is still in the early stages. She said she and colleagues are working to select a firm to conduct a national search and the target is to have a new warden by the end of 2024. Shane Dady, a deputy superintendent with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, has been serving as interim warden for the county jail since the end of last September.

In the coming months, the data in the survey results will serve as an important guide for Ms. Innamorato and other county officials, said George Dougherty, an associate professor and director of the Master of Public Policy and Management degree program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Mr. Dougherty, who disclosed that he took the survey, said that as carefully constructed as survey questions can be, none are perfect. The omission of potential answers to some questions is a part of that, he said.

But while the data can be a part of Ms. Innamorato’s policy-making decisions, it’s not the only factor, he said.

“If you're asking whether or not this should be the sole driver of her agenda, I would say no,” Mr. Dougherty said. “[But] it’s good information, and it’s certainly better information than before we had the survey done. And it can just help inform future decisions.”

First Published: April 17, 2024, 11:05 p.m.
Updated: April 18, 2024, 3:30 p.m.