Verona Boulevard paving hailed as example of intergovernmental collaboration

The bumpy brick road of Verona Boulevard is no more after the completion of a joint paving project between the city of Pittsburgh and the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Penn Hills.

Pittsburgh City Councilman Khari Mosley and state Reps. Joe McAndrew, D-Penn Hills, and La’Tasha D. Mayes, whose 24th District spans from the Hill District to East Hills, stood at the intersection of Verona Boulevard and Lincoln Avenue to celebrate the paving work, a product of their intergovernmental cooperation to benefit the citizens of both communities.

“We realize in this community, given the disrepair of the road, and the type of financial investment that would have been necessary to restore the brick road, it would make much more sense for the taxpayers, as well as the residents of the community, to pave over and asphalt to really improve the quality of that road,” Mosley said.

McAndrew, in an agreement with Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey earlier this year, secured a state grant of $250,000 toward paving East Hills Drive. This resulted in further collaboration between Penn Hills and the city of Pittsburgh, where the city agreed to cover the cost of paving Verona Boulevard to the Penn Hills county line.

On May 29, however, McAndrew had to physically stand in the construction crew’s way on Verona Boulevard due to a miscommunication that would have stopped construction short of the Penn Hills border, abandoning the arrangement.

The miscommunication of jurisdiction led to additional legislation being passed, spearheaded by Mosley, to pave up to the Penn Hills county line.

“Whether you have an incident like that or not, there are people who care and are willing to work through those situations and come back to a resolution at the end of the day,” McAndrew said. “It took some legislation. It took city council to city council. It took effort. But that resolution came to be, and it was because of our ability to surpass the hiccups.”

Verona Boulevard is a key artery connecting Penn Hills with the city of Pittsburgh’s Lincoln-Larimer neighborhood. Formerly an example of long-standing infrastructural neglect, the roadway now is an example of the budding intergovernmental cooperation between Pittsburgh and its neighbors to address public concerns despite legislative challenges.

“We have to remember that boundaries are really kind of artificial and arbitrary, so I think this is a way for us to build a proverbial bridge between our communities, between our districts, between the local and the state level,” Mayes said.