CITY COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS Angelle Guyette and Mary Jo Bradley attended the City Council meeting this morning. Angelle handed in the petition with 386 signatures and gave a very good presentation. Gene Ricciardi had her taped testimony sent to the Act 47 development people for inclusion in their deliberations. Good job, Angelle. Angelle and Mary Jo met with Councilman Ricciardi after the meeting. He said we made points he had not considered so he was pleased to have our input. One of Angelle's excellent recommendations was a way to market the training and the Academy in order to bring in additional funds. Another opportunity to get on record is for some of us to speak at the regular Wednesday Council meeting tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. BACKGROUND INFORMATION The Act 47 recommendations are available online from the City council's website: <http://www.city.pittsburgh.pa.us/council/> For those of you who have not had the opportunity to attend the CPA yet, below is some information which you might find helpful plus there are some additional points of concern that you might want to address when you contact City Council and/or Act 47 members. To put it as simply as possible: Act 47 is a proposal to the City of a 5 year plan for financial recovery. In regards to the Police Training Academy, the proposal is to close the Police Academy for six months out of the year. During those six months it would be used for in-service and yearly training. They are to find a way to plan to combine the County and City together by 2005. There is NO scheduled Citizen's Police Academy or any other training to be anywhere else during that time. Those currently involved with the training are either being transferred or their jobs terminated. The State and City require Police Officers to be certified with 6 hrs of training a year, 8 hours of firearms training, and updates for CPR, First Aid - First Responder training every two years. This training is PER OFFICER. There are at least 900 Officers in the City of Pittsburgh. You can probably identify your own concerns to write about, too, but just a few comments on the above info. As you know we have reported on what good training we had and how long it took us; it just does not make sense to think that six months is enough time to train 900 Officers. Another issue that concerns those of us who work in our communities is that Elaine Caparelli's position as Volunteer Coordinator will be eliminated; this really pulls the rug out from under the volunteer population's contribution and access to the Police. As far as our trainers go, if this six month plan goes into effect they will have to be transferred or terminated and we will lose the certified trainers that make this such a quality program. WHAT CAN YOU DO? ACTION STEPS SPEAK AT THE CITY COUNCIL MEETING TOMORROW AT 10:00 A.M. CONTACT CITY COUNCIL AND ACT 47 (ADDRESSES BELOW) DOWNLOAD PETITION AND GET SIGNATURES START MAKING CALLS TO YOUR OWN NETWORK One problem is that time is very, very short - we did not realize it but Council is meeting with Act 47 on Friday to go over the proposal page-by-page which means we need to notify people and prod them to get their input in ASAP. A letter and the petition is being sent to all of the CPA alumna but FAX and e-mails will probably work best. It would be helpful if you could identify yourselves as graduates of the Academy. This is a list of Act 47 member e-mail addresses along with the City Council members with their District, e-mail addresses and the Committees they chair. The development team e-mail addresses are: jhr@escm.com (Jim Roberts) kapland@pfm.com (Dean Kapland) City Council e-mail addresses: District 1 Luke.Ravenstahl@city.pittsburgh.pa.us - Public Works and Environmental Services District 2 Alan.Hertzberg@city.pittsburgh.pa.us - Finance & Budget District 3 Gene.Ricciardi@city.pittsburgh.pa.us - President & Hearings District 4 James.Motznik@city.pittsburgh.pa.us - Parks & Recreation & Youth Policy District 5 Doug.Shields@city.pittsburgh.pa.us - Engineering and Construction District 6 Sala.Udin@city.pittsburgh.pa.us - Planning, Zoning & Land Use District 7 Len.Bodack@city.pittsburgh.pa.us - Public Safety District 8 William.Peduto@city.pittsburgh.pa.us - General Svcs, Technology and the Arts District 9 Twanda.Carlisle@city.pittsburgh.pa.us - Housing, Economic Dev & Promotion ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you watch today's City Council meeting on TV, you can hear the Council members talk about what a critical time this is for the city. Act 47 is a FIVE YEAR plan which means we are going to have to live with this for the next FIVE YEARS! If we take the time to get our opinion and suggestions heard now, we can really help ourselves and our city. Mary Jo Bradley, Executive Director Wired Blocks Network http://groups.msn.com/WiredBlocksNetwork e-mail: wiredblocks@aol.com voice: 412-441-2550