Mayor Ed Gainey rolled out his proposed 2025 Pittsburgh budget on Monday, signaling a meaningful downshift in how the city plans to staff its police bureau going forward.
Deputy Mayor Jake Pawlak said during a press conference the city does not necessarily see a need to return to its decades-old standard of 900 uniformed police officers. Instead, Pawlak said the city would seek to find the “right number of officers to complete the job,” and would look to increase the role of civilians in the work of the bureau.
Under prior Mayor Bill Peduto, the number of officers topped 1,000. Even last year, when Gainey’s administration reduced the target number to 850, Pawlak said the eventual goal was to return to 900.
The city might want to invest in “cardboard-cutout cops,” Fraternal Order of Police President Robert Swartzwelder said, sarcastically, shortly after the budget’s release. “I’ve seen no plan corresponding [to the staffing reductions], detailing how they’re going to cut services,” he continued. “You still have the same three stadiums, the same population and the same needs of those citizens for police response.”
The proposed budget includes 50 fewer police officers than last year, but adds 16 civilians to last year’s total, including four evidence technicians, six real time crime specialists and six police service aides.
“What [this budget] reflects is that we are continuing to invest in the civilianization of activities with the police bureau,” Pawlak said. “That has been an objective of the Gainey Administration from the beginning.”
“We’re not seeing it in a meaningful way in the field,” said Swartzwelder, indicating that officers are not experiencing a reduction in the responsibilities that fall on them. With just around 300 officers actually on patrol, and overtime filling holes, he said, “It’s affecting the individual police officers and their families, and it’s also affecting the city’s fiscal health.”
The bureau is short of the proposed 800 officers today due to a slew of retirements and resignations in recent years; Pawlak estimated the current count around 750.
Swartzwelder said 156 of those are eligible for retirement.
The city has been short of its budgeted number of officers consistently since a hiring freeze during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was not until Monday that administration officials said the target number may not return to the long-standing 900.
The 2025 budget will be the third passed under Gainey, and the last before he stands for re-election in a May Democratic primary. Gainey will formally present his proposals to City Council in November, and then council can propose amendments before final passage ahead of the end of the year.
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Pittsburgh will plan to cut spending next year, getting ahead of a projected $38 million (or 5.4%) drop in revenue from the current year. The revenue dip is fueled almost entirely by the end of pandemic-era federal relief dollars, which had been injecting more than $40 million into the city’s operating budget every year since 2021. The city also projects a dip in revenues from real estate tax, deed transfer tax, amusement tax and interest earnings.
The result is a proposed operating budget with many departments spending less than they did in 2024, though Pawlak said that can be achieved through eliminating some unfilled positions, and without degrading core resident services.
“We’re confident that the budget as proposed won’t result in a reduction in service levels,” Pawlak said.
Among the biggest changes:
- The Department of Law budget will drop by about half, after ballooning this year due to nearly $7 million in legal judgment payouts.
- The Department of City Planning budget will decrease 46%
- The Department of Parks and Recreation budget would decrease 25%
- The Department of Public Works’ Bureau of Facilities budget would decrease 21%.
The mayor’s office, which has grown in size and budget considerably since Gainey took office, would remain at about the same budget next year.
Paving spared, but only two bridges
The mayor proposed a $117 million capital budget, which is used for one-off infrastructure and equipment expenses rather than operating costs. This year’s capital budget was bigger, at $158 million.
The engineering and construction section would be $32 million smaller than it was this year, with just two bridges slated for major spending next year (the Charles Anderson Bridge and the Swindell Bridge).
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While past out-year capital budgets predicted unusually low sums set aside for street paving for 2025 and 2026, the new proposal ups the paving budget for those years to $20 million and $15 million, respectively.
Pawlak said the reduction in capital spending is partly due to shifts in when federal money is accessible, and the city’s “sparing approach to adding new projects” only where it’s critical.
City projects dwindling reserve fund
The city’s reserve fund swelled as it froze hiring during the pandemic and federal relief funds prevented deficit spending. Now, the Gainey administration’s five-year forecast envisions dipping into the fund to cover key programs every year. By 2029, the city projects its reserves to be at the legal minimum level of 10% of expenses — or about $70 million. That’s more than $100 million less than the fund is projected to hold at the end of this year.
Though the city touts an operating surplus this year, its accounting does not include annual transfers to the capital budget, the Housing Opportunity Fund and the Stop The Violence Fund as operating costs. Once those are factored in, the city’s rainy day fund took a $34 million hit this year, to $174 million.
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Pawlak said the five-year plan released Monday does not necessarily mean the city will reduce its reserve fund to $70 million by 2029 — but that the proposal for next year will not cause a dip below the 10% threshold any time in the five year period.
“We still produce new budgets every year,” Pawlak said, adding that they will “likely look to see that we can improve those ratios as we get closer to 2029.”
Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.
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