Mt. Washigton REDD UP

Pittsburgh “REDD UP” crews hit Mt Washington today in preparation for the G20 Summit in September. Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl says apart from downtown, Mt. Washington will be the area most visited by members of the media and visiting dignitaries. As crews cut down weeds and a street sweeper scoured Grandview Avenue the mayor spoke with Mt. Washington Community Development Corporation Executive Director Chris Beichner. Beichner says he has a long list of items he hopes the mayor’s office will attend to before the meeting. Most of them are small items such as a fresh coat of paint on the railing but others, like replacing the streetlights and rebuilding the Bayer sign, are much more labor and capital intensive. Ravenstahl says most of the small items will be taken care of but the other two items have been bogged down in governmental red tape. The street lights were to have been replaced this summer but Ravenstahl says a state contract that was part of the effort has been held up in Harrisburg and efforts by the Bayer Corporation to replace the sign were put on hold thanks to a council passed ordinance prohibiting new signs downtown. That legislation was an outgrowth of the spat between the mayor and several council members over the billboard on the new transportation center. Ravenstahl says the clean up effort on Mt. Washington is getting extra help from volunteers who have stepped forward to help with G20 efforts. He says he hopes to put all those names in a database and then draw on those resources in the future. An army of volunteers was enlisted for the All Star game but those contacts were not saved. Ravenstahl says that will not happen again.