City Channel Pittsburgh, PA Mayor Peduto's Reddit AMA - July 17, 2014, 17 Jul 2014

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From YouTube: Henry Pyatt - Mayor Peduto's Reddit AMA July 17, 2014

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Mayor Peduto held his first ever Reddit AMA as Mayor of the City of Pittsburgh. Staff and Department heads shared their thoughts with us in between answer questions from City residents. In this clip, Henry Pyatt, Small Business and Redevelopment Manager discusses the Mayor's AMA.

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Do you think of all this you'll.

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Report on all these powerful important problem solving people in one.

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The same time, it's pretty cool. Not only do we have a lot of the directors and chiefs of all the different apartment departments this time around, but we've also got a handful of support staff. So we're answering questions with remarkable efficiency. Well,.

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That's one of things I think I know this is that as we get going here like they're starting to get this crackling energy in the room now it feels like something's going on so.

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Absolutely super exciting. We just took a question about why Pittsburgh's, not annexing adjacent municipalities and my colleague, Kyle Chan, kelapa, Lee and I, ran up to our boss, chief MacDonald Roberts and as political science students. We told her the whole story about allegheny city being an X 1928 on the state laws changed at that after that, because of the backwash flash. So now, each municipality has to have a majority vote to accept annexation, whereas before it was a majority vote of the totality of the people within the two municipalities. Obviously politically was.

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Oh I, don't know Wilmerding or millvale or gonna.

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Say yeah: let's.

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Get rid of ourselves, you.

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Know so I think we're gonna see so there's a creative creativeness of the Pittsburgh Public right, like they're gonna, be asking some quirk and stuff tonight. It's can we need to see how people respond so do you know how this all came about like what was the impetus I mean.

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I'm completely sure I know that my colleague, Laura Mike's, will put the thing together, she's the one that set up all these handles and set up the thread and talked to read it and made it all happen. I believe it.

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Was straight up the mayor's idea to.

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Get us all together in one room and I.

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Mean you know, he's a big.

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Believer in transparency.

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Want to make sure that everybody can get in touch with with the mayor's staff. Everybody can get a hold of the tools that they need, or even in this case, just answers to questions that they might have yeah, and it's really fun, because with all these people around here at the same time,.

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38 seconds to figure something yeah.

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So does this happen often, like you guys, have the opportunity, like being alone together and like have this sort of what.

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We work together, constant. um You know we're mostly here on the fourth fifth and sixth floors in the city-county building, we're always in each other's office. We're always spreading stuff out in the floor.

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And sit down figuring out stuff, but.

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At the same time, we're never rolled in the same.

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Crew, yeah yeah. So why don't you reintroduce yourself to the folks because I know you've done a podcast with us before, but.

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I think a lot of people gonna watch them. So my name is Henry item the small business and redevelopment manager I serve in the Bureau of neighborhood empowerment, which is led by chief Valerie McDonald Roberts she's, actually right behind you, I'd pan your camera, but I'd screw it up. Just.

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Shake it violently to make sure like that yeah so.

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I deal with small business and CBC.

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Type issues redevelopment in older neighborhoods, my.

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Colleague, Kyle sitting right behind you he's.

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My counterpart for housing.

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Helping to make sure that there's adequate and decent housing.

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Stock that serves the people. It really comes in different neighborhoods and putting.

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Together, financing for all those projects, yes.

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So we'll have to get calla lon, because that's one of the things that outside people point to with Pittsburgh right is that there's this giant old housing stock. That's poised for redevelopment poised for sort of momentum, absolutely.

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And we're lucky because most of the buildings that were built here so there's a lot of places that the housing crisis hit really hard. They built up a lot of inventory in the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s and, quite frankly, the stuff that we built.

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What we need 19, teens and 20s.

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30S to 40s there's.

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A way higher quality.

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Than that stuff yeah.

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So yeah we've had our trouble.

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Yeah we've got some vacants.

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But the fact is, their bones are so.

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Much better than another citizen, so I'm gonna stand to gain. It doesn't.

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Take that much investment to get to a place where they're, gorgeous and charming like they used to.

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Be the character of an old north old industrial city right.

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Split-Level ranch is here no.

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Split-Level ranch ills and that's why people can make movies here so too, because its architectural a still interesting and compelling absolutely cool. So what question would you ask the mayor? You can ask him anything to have like something. That's been burning that you can.

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Wait don't not, as we present the last leg, no I, don't know how we're thinking about what people might ask us and.

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To answer those questions.

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I guess for me, I'm really interested in his uh in his new commitment to fitness, yeah and I'd like him to take a bike ride well,.

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I, don't know if you've heard, but we now have a community bicycle at the hardware store it's a shared bicycle regime, so we're very proud of that at the guys at deco resource resources donated to so I think it's it's part of a change in paradigm here in the city, how people are thinking about transportation, how this thing about health? You.

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Know we're remote amazing right to build you. A coffee, rack, fit yeah cool.

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Thanks for helping on again I'm gonna try to do like 3-4 minutes of folks just to keep things moving along and maybe later on. Look at you jump in any one to grab your buddy Kyle, because if he looks.

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Like he's ready to.

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