Whether you prefer being around the table, serving up food, on skateboard or feet to the road, there are lots of ways to meet up with others and spend Thanksgiving alone, but together. Whether you want to justify a large meal by first getting in your steps for a good cause or shake it out later in the day, commune with people in groups indoors or outdoors, stand up or sit down, you can catch that sense of camaraderie and gratitude that often sums up the spirit of the day. 

Get moving

Highland Park Turkey Trot

If you join this trot, you can be among those who say they were part of the first cohort at this inaugural event hosted by the Highland Park Community Council. Run or walk around the reservoir — a 0.75 mile route. 

Where: Highland Park, up the stairs at the top of the reservoir just off of Highland Park Avenue
When: 10 a.m. (9:30 a.m. if you want to decorate a turkey headband)
Cost: Free

More info or hpccpgh@gmail.com

Humane Animal Rescue of Pittsburgh

Take an animal out of a shelter for a few days to give it a break over your holiday and keep each other company! Registration is online and easy. The Rescue also has a handful of volunteer opportunities in their facilities that do not involve handling animals. 

Where: Homewood West and Chateau in Pittsburgh; also Verona 
When: TBD and coordinated with HARP
Cost: Varies based on food and other supplies needed for the animal’s care, which the fostering individual is expected to cover

More Info:  (foster, volunteer) 

Join a dinner or serve one

Light of Life Ministries 

Light of Life Ministries serves those impacted by poverty, addiction and homelessness and works to distribute meals on the holidays. If you’d like to help package and deliver as a volunteer, sign up online. 

Where: 234 Voeghtly St., Pittsburgh
When: 3:45 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Cost: Free 

Sign-up portal, email volunteer@lightoflife.org or call 412-258-6128

Surround yourself with live music 

Christine Graziano is a writer and can be reached at studio.cgm@gmail.com.

This story was fact-checked by Tanya Babbar. 

The post There are communal alternatives to the Thanksgiving table appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Eric Boerer estimates that he attends more than 100 public meetings a year. For the advocacy director of Bike Pittsburgh, being able to join a meeting online makes it easier to pop in and stay updated or give input on something that otherwise might not be a priority. You can, he notes, “listen in while you cook,” and there’s no need to hire a babysitter.

Carol Hardeman, executive director of the Hill District Consensus Group, values the more personal experience of in-person meetings. She has missed at least one opportunity to speak due to difficulties she had getting on screen on time.

The two are among many civic-minded people trying to participate in the community at a time when tools exist for a golden age of public engagement, but when each agency seems to have its own unique rules for when and how citizens can have input into decision-making.

More than three years after COVID-19 drove most public processes online, there’s no consistency among Pittsburgh and Allegheny County agencies regarding citizen participation. Some of the region’s most important agencies are split on practices, and a few appear to be running afoul of state guidance.

Unelected boards and commissions make important decisions affecting how you travel, the water you drink and flush, the availability of housing and other buildings and even aspects of the educational system.

PublicSource, in its Board Explorer tool, gives readers a look at some 60 panels that make important decisions for the region. This fall, we zoomed in on 10 of those, asking how they’re interacting with the public.

Before 2020, the rules and practices for public engagement with such panels were relatively simple, and guided by the Sunshine Act. In short, governmental decisions have to be made at regular or advertised meetings, open to the public, with deliberations on most issues held in full view amid opportunities for citizen comment.

Early in the pandemic, when the usual standard of in-person meetings wasn’t always prudent or viable, the General Assembly passed Act 15 of 2020, which allowed agencies to conduct meetings with “an authorized telecommunications device until the expiration or termination of the COVID-19 disaster emergency.” That emergency, though, officially ended in mid-2021.

The state Office of Open Records now considers the virtual-only option expired. The office provides for exemptions in cases of declared local disasters, but now generally expects all public meetings to have in-person access, according to Liz Wagenseller, the office’s executive director. 

That suits Hardeman, who wants to look people in the eye, and finds it useful to observe, and use, body language. When someone is on Zoom, and their video is off, she can’t tell if they are really listening to her or to other public speakers.

Boerer acknowledged that the ease of meeting online comes with a trade-off. He feels you get more out of an in-person meeting and can connect and chat with residents and staffers afterwards. “You can get a sense of the room, how people are feeling.”

Panning cameras vs. invisible boards

Three of the 10 boards and commissions reviewed by PublicSource continue to conduct online-only meetings. 

The Pittsburgh City Planning Commission, Urban Redevelopment Authority [URA] and Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh [HACP] all cite the closure of their longtime Ross Street offices and their relocation from there to 412 Boulevard of the Allies as the reason. David Geiger, the URA’s director of government and strategic affairs, said the conference room on the ground floor of the agencies’ current location is undergoing renovation. Representatives of all three agencies said they intend to reincorporate an in-person component once renovations are complete. Geiger gave no estimated date of completion. 

Instead of crowded in-person meetings, the URA, HACP and Planning Commission use Zoom.

For the URA’s September board meeting, members logged in from separate spaces.

For much of the meeting, the virtual setup allowed viewers to see only the person speaking, making it impossible for the audience to know whether other members were actively listening.

The URA reports, though, that virtual attendance numbers regularly exceed 50 and push 100, and complaints about access have dropped since the meetings were held in a Ross Street meeting room with limited capacity.

Two boards — the Community College of Allegheny County [CCAC] and the Allegheny County Housing Authority — have reverted to in-person public meetings format, although ACHA will also set up a virtual link upon request. 

Other agencies are holding hybrid meetings, potentially offering the best of both worlds — in-person access with the convenience of remote participation. Not all hybrid formats, though, are created equal.

During the Sept. 15 meeting of the Allegheny County Airport Authority, board members kept their video off as the meeting was conducted on the platform WebEx instead of the more commonly used Zoom. Starting at 11 a.m., it concluded by 11:30. Agenda items and a presentation were read speedily with no discussion of any item.  

In contrast, the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority [PWSA] convenes board members in one room. They face a spread of seats assembled for the public and a podium for speakers. The online viewer gets to see both the public arena, the speaker and the board members, as the camera pans to each area depending on who has the stage. 

According to Rebecca Zito, PWSA’s senior manager of public relations, the agency invested $19,200 during the pandemic to hire an audio visual contractor and now devotes a staff person to each meeting to ensure “a seamless experience.”

However, Zito said that public attendance at PWSA board meetings was actually down to 10 to 15 people, versus pre-pandemic levels of 25 to 35 people.

Public participation 101

Lucyna de Barbaro, of Squirrel Hill, attends only a few public meetings each year despite her concern for environmental and social justice issues. 

“I never know how to find out about them,” de Barbaro said. She generally relies on organizations to prompt her to show up.

“Once you know through your network or through some organizing efforts that the meeting is happening, then everything is kind of easy, the information is out there, there is a way to sign up, rules are provided so that is not a problem,” she said. “The problem is knowing — even knowing — which organizations would take our input.”

Even with prompting, speaking up at a meeting can be “a little intimidating in the sense that if you don’t participate and observe the workings of the board, you actually do not know what type of input you can provide. ... Will my comments matter?"

If you, too, want to have more of a say in the decisions of important agencies in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, here are five steps toward more effective engagement.

Step 1: Identify panels in which you have an interest

PublicSource provides Board Explorer, a tool for navigating some 60 of the most influential panels overseeing functions of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County governance.

The city lists its panels here.

The county provides a drop-down list of its panels here.

Step 2: Review the agenda — as soon as it becomes available

Agendas outline the business at hand and often allot a period for public comment. If comments are heard early in the meeting, you can more confidently plan a return to work or childcare pick-up. If placed at the end, as they are, for example, at Pittsburgh Regional Transit [PRT] meetings, you might need to make open-ended plans, as some meetings last hours. 

Amendments to the Sunshine Act made in 2021 require that agencies post agendas 24 hours in advance. Some panels do better, posting agendas three to seven days prior to meetings. Others, though, come close to the 24-hour rule.

That might create difficulties for those who want to physically attend, but need to arrange medical transport, as it often takes more than 24 hours to reserve a ride, said Paul O’Hanlon, a disability advocate and a longtime advisory member of the City-County Task Force on Disabilities.

Step 3: Plan ahead if accessibility is an issue

Do you want to attend the meeting in-person or virtually? Check the meeting options and decide. Consider parking locations and the cost to park for the time you expect to be there. Travel via public transit may involve additional walk time. The transit stop nearest the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority [ALCOSAN] board meeting room, for instance, is roughly a 28-minute walk away.

All agencies told PublicSource they would do their best to accommodate reasonable requests for deaf and blind participants’ needs with advance notice. The URA noted challenges with a shortage of ASL interpreters. And while HACP has a Disability Compliance Officer, not all agencies do. For virtual or hybrid meetings, check that Zoom’s closed captions settings are automatically set to ‘on’ by the host.

Step 4: Hone your planned comments, usually to 3 minutes

Check on any limits or requirements needed to speak in advance. Many require prior registration. Can you fit everything you want to say into three minutes? Agencies may use lights, buzzers or verbal interruption with a gentle warning to cue the end of a participant’s time. It can help to write out what you want to say in advance, noting that three minutes is usually about one typed page, and practice with a few run-throughs out loud at varying speeds.

“The three-minute rule can be difficult for someone who needs a little time to think through what they want to say,” said O’Hanlon. 

Written comments, including by email, are another way to give input in advance of a board action, but not all agency websites make it clear where comments can be sent. Some have web forms, while one accepts written comments only by postal mail. Pay attention to any deadlines for comment submission.

Step 5: If you’re scratching your head, ask

Maybe you're looking for the agenda or minutes from many months ago, a video link or an address for the meeting. If you can’t find it online, locate agency contact info and ask. Just posing a question can prompt change. PublicSource’s inquiry about the budget of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, for instance, spurred that agency to rapidly post current information.

Don't be discouraged if navigating a public meeting isn’t yet what you hoped it would be.

Chardaé Jones, the former mayor of Braddock, has been on both sides of the table. As a volunteer for organizations, she kept showing up at public meetings, seeing what her community needed and volunteering to do it until she ended up in office. “As mayor, I saw community engagement as essential because without it you don't know how you're doing as a person in office.”

The pandemic may have caused a seismic shift in the landscape of public meetings, but it also created opportunities for improvement. 

“I don’t know of anybody that is perfect, but my experience is that most everybody, kind of, is willing to learn. In my experience, people make adjustments,” said O’Hanlon. “It is just an ongoing challenge.” 

Christine Graziano is a freelance reporter and can be reached at info@publicsource.org.

This story was fact-checked by Abigail Nemec-Merwede.

The post Open to the public? Commissions in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County all over the board on transparency appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

My earliest memories are from 147th Street in Rosedale, Queens. Near the bustling Francis Lewis Boulevard, ours was a quiet street, lined with trees and modest houses with space to play in front and backyards.

Yet our playground of choice was the hard, gray concrete of the sidewalk and asphalt of the road, which seemed like an extension of our homes.

This was where all the block kids regularly met, where friendships were made, while our parents watched from the front steps or inside. It was where we learned how to watch out for each other, yelling “CAAARRR!” on what seemed like the rare chance that one would pass.

Over time, streets in the United States and elsewhere have increasingly been turned over strictly to car traffic, making scenes like this feel like far-flung memories. Yet some communities are shifting back, reclaiming asphalt for pedestrian use, often with innovative policies to make streets truly shared spaces.

In the United Kingdom, Bristol resident Alice Ferguson caught the attention of BBC News for her work to reinvent how neighborhood streets are used in the city of 460,000 residents. She led a campaign that simplified the process of closing down streets for frequent residential use.

According to the BBC, around 40 authorities in the United Kingdom have modified their permitting rules to increase the ease of more frequent closures, and the concept has recently been piloted in Toronto.

In the Netherlands, pedestrians regularly mingle with traffic in what’s called a “woonerf,” a shared street or square, where curbs, signs, painted lines and traffic lights are eliminated to open the street to everyone. Woonerfs exist by the thousands, akin to a more enhanced version of Pittsburgh’s Market Square.

Pittsburgh has also explored larger pedestrian takeovers in its OpenStreetsPGH events. Each summer, streets in selected neighborhoods are temporarily closed to vehicular traffic so residents can stroll and bike between communities. In the Complete Streets initiative, Pittsburgh is also studying and adapting the way streets are used to make them safer and more usable for all forms of transportation.

But given that our streets are one of our largest public assets, can we do more to use them? The city has already embraced some aspects of the open streets concept. There are models for increasing temporary recreational spaces on streets and open lots in cities like New York and Minneapolis. What would it take for residents to take greater advantage of streets on a regular basis, especially in areas with fewer play options, where streets could be connectors instead of barriers?

Moira Kaleida, chief of staff for District 4 Councilman Anthony Coghill, described seeing kids near her Beechview home using the street to play hockey.

She said she thinks closing streets could increase safety and could also benefit neighborhoods like Carrick where households have limited yard space.

Due to topography and disjointed access to city parks, Coghill’s district includes areas that can be classified as “play deserts.” These are generally defined as areas that are more than a 10-minute walk from an open space such as a park or playground in good condition.

Despite a city goal for every home to be within a 10 minute walk to a park or parklet, about 16 percent of residents are outside that range, according to Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, which is studying the issue but has not yet published comprehensive data.

Lifelong Beechview resident Phyllis DiDiano, 60, said she thinks closing portions of side streets near the neighborhood’s business district on Broadway Avenue could attract new businesses and increase a feeling of community.

“People come to me all the time and say how much they miss the sidewalk sales, for example. Being on the street doesn’t have to be a grand affair,” said DiDiano, president of the Beechview Area Concerned Citizens community group.

DiDiano pointed out that a farmers market has already used a side street and, on Halloween, a  business hosted a well-attended party just off the business strip, bringing in a boxing ring, vendors, live music and food trucks.

“It all happened in a really small space, and people were on top of each other,” DiDiano said, “but the result was that we had to say hello to one other and everyone had a good time.”

She said she thinks streets near the neighborhood’s library branch and two parklets could also be candidates for more regular pedestrian use.

Street closures require a city permit, which are important to help first responders plan response routes. The city’s Office of Special Events issues hundreds of them annually for block parties ($25) and special events ($200, starting March 1).

NaTisha Washington, green initiative coordinator for Operation Better Block, said more regular street closures in South Homewood “could have a positive impact” in conjunction with local projects related to Safe Routes to School, a federally backed initiative that Pittsburgh plans to implement later this year.

The hope is to make routes less dangerous to encourage walking and biking to school to promote physical activity.

Karina Ricks, Pittsburgh’s director of mobility and infrastructure, said she believes the reclamation of the street for play is ultimately in line with goals outlined in Mayor Bill Peduto’s Complete Streets initiative.

Ideally, residents would be able to use streets safely without actually closing them, Ricks said. Her department is analyzing the city’s streets to better understand if they are serving their most useful role, whether as a major thoroughfare or an area for shared pedestrian and car traffic.

Good street design, Ricks said, “should facilitate play and use for all ages.”

Ricks cited the “woonerf” concept as one of the inspirations for Complete Streets. Other models of increased pedestrian use include the Play Streets program in New York City, which allows residents to work with the health department and sponsoring organizations to temporarily close streets to traffic in the summer. The intent is to increase places for play and physical activity.

Models could be adapted locally, but Ricks noted that “one size doesn’t fit all.”

Heidi Pope, director of youth development for the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, said residents there generally live “within six blocks of a green space, but can’t always get to it or their local recreation center because of crime and safety issues or traffic concerns.”

A pop-up parks program brings recreation to them, rolling out low-cost trailers to different neighborhoods during the summer to give residents access to skate ramps, games and sports equipment. The trailers are typically parked on nearby open land to create spaces for play and recreation. Streets are sometimes closed for public events.

Pittsburgh District 5 Councilman Corey O’Connor wonders if Pittsburgh really needs a formal system for more regular street use. He said that “might just take away from kids being kids and add a cost to something residents are doing naturally.”

Roadways like Pocusset Street in Squirrel Hill South have been turned into trails in his district, and the Playful Pittsburgh Collaborative recently implemented a Play Trail in Hazelwood.

But there are logistics to consider. Which safety controls are best? Who keeps tabs on unsupervised children? How can residents learn about traffic disruptions? How can neighborhoods stay accessible for residents with disabilities?

Plus, many Pittsburgh streets are 100 years old, built long before the city considered how detours would impact our modern traffic patterns.

“There isn’t a lot of redundancy [built into] the network,” said Alex Pazuchanics, the city’s assistant director of planning, permitting and policy.

That can make detours difficult to plan. But the city has been working with experts in traffic modeling at Carnegie Mellon University to better understand how changes to one route impact traffic patterns.

Pittsburgh District 8 Councilwoman Erika Strassburger said she was recently surprised that some residents in her district have lengthy walks to open spaces. She’s excited by the idea of expanding pedestrian street use.

Yet she wonders if small-scale but more frequent closures could become “a victim of its own success,” leading to other concerns with traffic and increased permitting requests.

She suggested trying a pilot on a few streets to “work out the kinks.”

Thinking back to my memories of 147th Street, I see how different my 5-year-old’s play experience is today.

We live on a fairly quiet road, but frequently enough, a car whizzes by to connect to the corridors along South Highland or Negley avenues in Shadyside. He’s largely confined to the sidewalk or our small backyard, as are other neighborhood kids who’ve yet to claim the street as their own.

Instead, the adults have begun to do so.

Since 2015, my neighbors have organized a block party that’s blossomed into a sizable event with live music, a spray station, bike riding zone and visit from a local fire truck.

Slowly, neighbors are forming friendships with people down the block who they may not have met were it not for the gatherings.

As I watch the evolution of the block party from a simple road closure to a tighter community, I can’t help but wonder how our neighborhoods can benefit if we rethink our streets.

Christine Graziano is a writer in Pittsburgh and founder and director of Plant Five for Life. She can be reached at studio.cgm@gmail.com.

This story was fact-checked by Tyler Losier.

The post Some communities view streets as pedestrian spaces. Could Pittsburghers benefit from more room to play? appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

My 5-year-old son was angry and shouting and clingy all last week. Every night from Monday onward, he called me to come into his bed to sleep or asked to come into ours.

It’s not his typical behavior. But nothing was typical about last week in Pittsburgh.

While I learned about the synagogue shooting as it was happening through phone alerts and the eyes of other worried parents, my son made it through the weekend unscathed. I even thought he made it through school on Monday without learning of the horrific events that took place in Squirrel Hill. My son’s teacher said nothing came up in school.

But that evening, as I sat down at my desk to work as I often do after my son goes to sleep, I heard him call out to me. I went down the stairs to his room. “What is it, honey?” I asked.

“Can you lay down next to me, Mom?”

I said OK and pulled his rocketship-speckled comforter over us. Before I knew it, he threw his entire body on top of mine — what felt like an attempt to make sure I didn’t leave. It had a feeling of desperation to it.

“What is it, buddy?” I asked him.

“Mom, I am having a nightmare in my mind.”

“But, you haven’t fallen asleep yet,” I said.

“I know, Mom, but it is a thought that won’t leave my head. I am afraid some bad guys are going to shoot me.”

***

I look at my boy every day and think he is beautiful. I may be biased as his mother, but what isn’t beautiful about a life that still mostly navigates the world in lightness and in the joy of play?

When the news of the shooting broke, I was at an event I had organized, a Family Day celebration designed to mark the start of children’s lives born to our community through tree giving, planting and celebration.

Shortly after it began, a friend who was volunteering approached and showed me the screen of her Apple watch. It read ‘Active Shooter on Shady and Wilkins’ — no punctuation. We looked at each other, eyes wide. I gulped down my fear and immediately put on a poker face so that my son and the other child near me wouldn’t see my insides.

At the same time, a familiar numbness came over me. The numbness of knowing the inevitability of this moment. In some ways, I had been preparing for it all year while we lived abroad in Spain. As we approached our return to the United States, I knew that my son’s days of innocence were in jeopardy. Kindergarten in America meant the start of active shooter drills.

***

He hadn’t yet had that drill in his school, but the time when he could be afraid of ‘bad guys’ had arrived sooner rather than later.

I froze as he clung to me in his bed. Knowing now that my son had heard the news during school, I tried to stay calm and pushed out a best version of a strong and steady voice. “Why are you worried about that?” I asked him.

He explained that during an after-school activity, a first-grader told him that his neighbor’s friend had been shot and killed by a bad guy with a gun.

My mind raced. I quickly grabbed on to a conversation that I had had hours earlier with the head of school in the hallway on my way to pick up my son. No doubt she had shared this advice with many other parents that Monday after the shooting.

I had asked her what I should say to my son if he did ask questions about the shooting, and she was very clear: “Listen. Correct facts. Keep it simple.”

But keeping it simple wasn’t easy because his questions had no end. “What was the whole story?” he asked. “Did she really die, Mom?” he asked several times. “Why would a person want to kill her? Where exactly was the bad guy when he did this? Was it nearby? How far up the road?”

“Far,” I answered quietly and calmly from our home in Shadyside. “It would take a long, long time to walk there.”

“OK,” he said, nervously. “Nowhere near here. OK,” he repeated, convincing himself danger wasn’t near our home.

Then he asked me to tell him a story as he always does at the close of the night. “What would you like to hear tonight?” I asked him.

“I don’t want the news of Friday or Thursday. Tell me the story of the Saturday news. All the story,” he emphasized as if he were aware there was still much more he didn’t know.

He clutched my arm with fierce strength as he fell asleep and announced that if he held me tight, I wouldn’t be able to leave him alone in the night.

When he finally drifted off and I wiggled out from under his grip, I kissed him on his head and left the room. My chest was tight.

I spent the next hour pacing around the adjacent room, recounting the conversation to my husband. I even pondered if we could move our family permanently out of the United States.

We are careful with my son’s exposure to violence at this tender developmental age. We intentionally choose not to have a TV in the house and limit iPad time mostly to books and educational games. He is still enjoying relatively innocuous shows like “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” “Thomas and Friends”, “PAW Patrol” and “Elmo’s World.”

My son only knew about bad guys as knights and imaginary monsters that existed in what he calls “the evil times” and has always assuredly announced they were “back then.”

While I don’t know exactly how much he understands, he seemed shaken by his first peek at a world he never knew existed before now. Our reality.

Oct. 27 was horrific for so many reasons. Not only for the loss of life and for the violence that caused it, but for the absolute loneliness and lack of connection to love, to living things, to humanity that the man who committed the shooting must have felt. The shooting was a tragedy because it targeted the Jewish community and ended lives. It is also tragic for what it has taken from the living and how it has changed the course of the future.

I will mourn that day for all those reasons.

I will mourn over the inability of our lawmakers to lessen the risk to us all and to foster an environment of civility and respect.

And I will mourn for what is being taken from our children.

Christine Graziano is the founder and director of Plant Five for Life. She can be reached at Director@plantfiveforlife.org.

The post Under his rocket-ship comforter, my kindergartener coped with learning bad guys aren’t only imaginary appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.