Pittsburgh Parking Authority lifts residency requirement for some employees

The Pittsburgh Parking Authority on Thursday eliminated a requirement that its garage attendants and enforcement officers live within the city in an effort to bolster recruitment and retention as the authority struggles to maintain its staffing levels.

Those workers still are required to reside within Allegheny County.

Candidates who live within the city will be given hiring preference.

City Councilman Bobby Wilson, D-North Side, who sits on the authority’s board, voiced concerns with nixing the requirement ahead of the board’s vote Thursday.

“I think it’s imperative that we just recognize that a vote yes to this is to concede that Pittsburgh is an undesirable place to live,” he said. “I’m not going to give up on Pittsburgh.”

Executive Director David Onorato rejected that notion. The change, he said, is simply meant to make it easier for the authority to recruit more workers without added costs.

Wilson has advocated for significant pay raises — he suggested as much as a 30% pay bump during a council meeting last week — rather than a change to residency requirements.

Onorato said such a pay raise wasn’t feasible, particularly as the authority is still making about $6 million less per year than it did prior to the covid-19 pandemic.

New garage attendants start making about $16.50 per hour, Onorato said, and experienced enforcement officers can make up to about $21 an hour.

Wilson questioned whether the authority could make due with fewer employees by instead relying more heavily on automated enforcement and ticket-by-mail options, an idea Onorato rejected. Even with automated enforcement, Onorato said, employees need to review the tickets the camera systems generate and monitor areas that aren’t equipped with that technology.

The parking authority currently employs 33 garage attendants and 22 enforcement officers, Onorato told City Council members during a meeting last week.

A full complement would include 53 garage attendants and 44 parking enforcement officers, according to Onorato.

The authority struggles to stretch limited enforcement staffing across the city, Onorato said. More staffing would allow them to better enforce parking in bus lanes, bike lanes, sidewalks and residential permit parking districts.

Staffing shortages have also forced the authority to sometimes lift the gates at garages, allowing people to park for free and forfeiting the money they could be generating.

Dino Taormina, principal officer and treasurer for Teamsters Local 926, endorsed the concept of allowing non-Pittsburghers to fill the jobs.

“We’ve turned down multiple individuals who live hundreds of yards outside city limits,” he said.

Wilson and fellow board member Kim Lucas, who leads the city’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, also questioned whether the authority could be doing a better job of recruiting before lifting the residency requirement. As Onorato last week laid out a case before City Council in support of nixing the residency mandate, officials acknowledged only a small fraction of jobs that needed to be filled were posted online.

Lucas called for “a more robust hiring process in general.”

Wilson and Lucas voted against the measure. The authority’s other board members — Liz Fishback, Bob Palmosina and Sean Luther — voted to remove the residency requirement Thursday.

The measure goes into effect immediately.

The city’s parking authority follows various other entities that have scrapped similar requirements in recent years.

The Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority in 2017 lifted longstanding residency requirements for certain management positions in an effort to attract more candidates.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down the residency requirement for Pittsburgh police in 2017, and the residency requirement for the city’s firefighters was lifted in 2022. The city’s EMS union is seeking permission for its members to live outside limits, too.