Mayoral Candidates Meet For Community Forum

The Democratic candidates for Mayor met at the Carnegie Music Hall today to participate in a community forum. The candidates each took turns answering questions from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Executive Director David Shribman.

The candidates were asked questions regarding the non-profit sector, the possibility of a city/county merger, the taxation of non-profit organizations, the continued support of food banks, historic preservation, and neighborhood development.

The candidates were each allotted up to 30 minutes to answer the questions. On the issue of taxing non-profits attorney Carmen Robinson was the only one who felt it was necessary to try and tax the largest of the non-profits. She said that she does not want to tax not for profit charities or smaller non-profit organizations but would like to tax the large Hospitals and Universities.

Mayor Ravenstahl said he does not see the need to tax non-profits and touted the work he has done to eliminate the taxes that had been levied against them.

Councilman Dowd said that taxing non-profit organizations was not needed because by addressing the city's finances enough money could be saved to keep any new taxes from being needed.

All three candidates agreed on the importance of the arts and of historic preservation in the city's many neighborhoods and agreed that support of local food banks and neighborhood development was needed.