Local government and schools were much on the minds of the roughly two dozen people at Sunday afternoon’s Bellevue town hall, but many shared a concern that there’s not enough good information available. Community newspapers have faded away, leaving the remaining public information, as one participant put it, “trapped in Facebook,” where discussion is rarely substantive and trustworthy.
Editor’s note
For our town hall series, Public Source is asking participants to speak from their own experience and listen to understand. To preserve that openness, this recap doesn’t include names or attributed quotes. To attend a future town hall, click here.
Available information on anything pertinent to the Ohio Valley community, from politics to community events to business, usually ends up on Facebook, where anything useful often gets buried in argument and bias – “drama,” as the group put it. Sometimes, that drama can even get personal, referencing specific individuals.
Nearly midway through its “You Have the Floor” town hall series, Pittsburgh’s Public Source facilitated conversation at Bellevue’s Tavern Pizza. In a party room in the back of the restaurant, attendees enjoyed pizza, pretzel bites and salad as they dug into the issues through small and big group discussion, aided by sticky note responses to prompts on white boards.
School board and mayoral elections pass by with not only sparse media coverage but not much information at all, many said. One person told the group that the website of a recent municipal mayoral candidate barely functioned and didn’t have a lot on it, leaving little to go off of before voting.
Another mentioned that in schools, modern standardized testing requirements have made it harder and harder for some students to keep up in a way that didn’t seem as bad in years past.
The group also resoundingly voiced interest in transportation. One person used a sticky note to point to the “destruction of walkable communities,” which comes with concerns about speedy drivers and unreliable public transit. Affordable housing, and affordability in general, also came up multiple times in the town hall.
You Have the Floor is a seven-day series of community town halls hosted by Public Source across the Greater Pittsburgh region.
Topics that got the group smiling included gardening, raising and supporting kids, chess, and new Asian restaurants. In a better world, they could work on how best to enjoy these things without all the drama.
Matt Petras is a visiting lecturer of English at the University of Pittsburgh and a freelance reporter and can be reached at matt456p@gmail.com and on Bluesky @mattapetras.bsky.social.
