Shaler Area High School honors civics students received a visit from state Rep. Lindsay Powell, D-Lawrenceville, on Feb. 5 as part of the “Ought to Be a Law” competition.
The competition aimed to encourage civic participation and critical thinking about current events by having high school students submit proposals for state legislation. Students submitted essays for proposed state legislation on issues that mattered to them.
Jason Pirring’s honors civics classes got a chance to interface with Powell and ask about the inner workings of government.
Students asked questions about how to raise the minimum wage in Pennsylvania and why state roads are so bad during snowstorms.
“I believe it’s a moral imperative that we have a higher minimum wage, but I think it also makes us more competitive. One of the issues that Pennsylvania consistently has is that we are losing population,” said Powell, who represents District 21 in Allegheny County. “In the city of Pittsburgh, for example, we, at our height, were a city that had about 600,000 people. Right now, our population is about 300,000. We’ve lost half of the population in about 25 years.
“People don’t want to move to Pennsylvania if the wages are super low. They’re going to go to Ohio and West Virginia, other places that have a higher minimum wage. If we want to grow our population so that we can grow our tax base and have a more vibrant city, it’s really hard to do that.”
District 21 encompasses Etna, Millvale, Reserve, Shaler and the Pittsburgh neighborhoods of City View, Spring Hill, Spring Garden, Troy Hill, Lawrenceville and the Strip District.
When asked how the representative chooses bills to support, Powell said, “When you’re listening to your community, when you’re in tune with what your neighbors want to see, it’s really easy to know what bills to support.”
Powell spoke about the importance of getting feedback from people who would be directly impacted by a proposed legislation.
“The reason that I ran for office was that I really wanted to help working families like the family that I came from. These are the issues that everyday people are facing.”
Powell also recognized the top five submissions to the competition with citations for their outstanding work.
In fifth place, Elizabeth Dunlevy and Madelyn Hannan’s essay addressed the growing issue of book bans in Pennsylvania and across the nation.
Fourth place went to Addy Applbaum and Jaylynn Jones for their essay on the importance of properly maintained road markings. Their proposed legislation would establish a statewide standard for road paint visibility, requiring regular inspections and annual repaintingto reduce the number of traffic accidents.
Olivia Lourenco’s proposed legislation on requiring financial literacy skills classes in high schools took third place. Lourenco proposed a statewide mandate that would encourage schools to offer these classes to not only strengthen their personal understanding but the future economy.
Second place went to Joel Searock and Quincy Montgomery for their work on raising the minimum wage to improve Pennsylvanians’ quality of life and boost the local workforce.
Max Prost and David Plawski won first place for their proposal on making Allegheny County more walkable and safer for pedestrians. They proposed legislation that would mandate routes to be classified as “hazardous” under 67 Pa. Code 447 to have a sidewalk placed within a set time frame based on surrounding traffic flow.
Following the awards, Powell took more questions from the students.
Bailey Heagy asked: “Do you have any plans for building things in Shaler or laws in Shaler?”
“One of the things that Shaler is really interested in is having a new recreational center nearby the municipal building — that’s something that they’ve been trying to fund for quite some time. That’s on the list. We also have tons of requests for more volunteer fire department equipment. Shaler has six different volunteer fire departments across the township. There’s also a big project in Shaler around housing that I’m excited about. The project is for senior housing for Shaler and Millvale. We’ve been working really closely with Shaler and Millvale because the building is split right between the two municipalities. Those are the three big items we’ve been working on,” Powell said.
As the event drew to a close, Powell emphasized the importance of getting involved in government at all levels.
“There’s a part and place in government for all of us,” she said.