A slate of budget amendments pitched by Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor’s administration on Monday earned council’s unanimous approval.
The newest iteration of the budget anticipates the city spending over $721.5 million in operating expenses this year and aims to remedy what O’Connor saw as glaring issues in earlier versions of the spending plan.
That reflects an increase of about $28 million in spending from the prior version of the budget.
It’s not unusual for officials to tweak the spending plan in their annual budgeting process, but the budget this year has been subject to particularly intense scrutiny and sweeping revisions — repeatedly.
Then-Mayor Ed Gainey in the fall proposed a 2026 spending plan that many officials feared failed to account for all of the city’s expenses.
Council members rejected that version of the budget, drastically revising it to add a 20% property tax increase, provide more funding for vehicles and plug what they saw as funding shortfalls.
Shortly after taking office, O’Connor asked for additional changes to the budget. His administration raised concerns that the budget fell millions short on a range of expenses, including health care, fuel, bridge maintenance and vehicle maintenance.
The amendments council backed Monday trim vacant job positions, spend the roughly $15 million surplus officials had previously anticipated for the year and pull about $6.5 million from the city’s reserve fund to make ends meet.
The new budget also yanks about $2 million from the EMS operating budget that was meant for vehicles.
Rea Price, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, said she felt the $12 million the city recently received from UPMC and the PNC Foundation to buy new snowplows and ambulances allowed the city to move that cash to cover other costs.
That particular change sparked debate at a recent council meeting, where Councilwoman Barb Warwick, D-Greenfield, raised concerns that the city’s dilapidated fleet needed all the funding it could get.
Officials will have only a few months of reprieve before starting work on the 2027 spending plan. An initial version of that budget must be released by the end of September.