City in the Streets community engagement event held in Oakland

PITTSBURGH — The ongoing community engagement series throughout Pittsburgh known as “City in the Streets” is not your typical block party.

“Having all this help, all this information, is fantastic,” said Darryl Daughtry of Oakland.

The event, implemented by Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, is meant to better serve community members by bringing city leaders to them, hearing their concerns and finding solutions.

“We wanted to make sure that we brought the departments to you, so you can tell the departments about different issues in the neighborhood that you would like fixed or questions you have,” Gainey said.

Wednesday’s City in the Streets was the fourth event in the series. Terrace Street in the Oakland neighborhood was filled with booths from various city departments, including the DPW.

Several community members believe the initiative is working and their concerns are being heard.

“Number one, the sidewalks,” said Betty Thomas of Oakland. “Some of the sidewalks are broken up and they’re hard to walk over. It’ll trip you or make you fall.”

For Daughtry, who’s lived in the neighborhood for 40 years, it’s the garbage cans that bother him. He said Pitt students leave the cans out after 7 p.m. when they’re supposed to be brought back in from the curb.

“It takes away from the beauty of the neighborhood because you have garbage cans out, so I just spoke with someone in the city and they said, ‘Oh there’s a way to take care of that,’ so that’s great news,” said Daughtry.

Daughtry said the city will give neighbors signs to put on garbage cans reminding people when to bring them inside.

“I graduated from Pitt, so now maybe some of the things I did, as a homeowner, it’s coming back to haunt me,” he joked. “They know we want them in the community. They know they’re a part of the community, but we also need to be good neighbors.”

The mayor said the city gets a fair number of calls from Oakland with a majority of complaints about potholes. He says they’ve fixed a lot of the potholes along with tackling some major issues including crime.

“We’ve done a good job with driving crime down in the city,” Gainey said. “It’s not just the police; it’s community members. It’s our mini-grants that we gave out to deal with the violence in the community. Those are working. We’re getting more kids to go into structured activity. That’s working. The more opportunities we open up for kids, the better it’ll be. It’s just one step at a time.”

The City in the Streets events will continue into the fall. Arlington is the next neighborhood.

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