Pittsburgh City Council on Monday approved the appointments of three department directors nominated by Mayor Ed Gainey.

Council unanimously approved Chris Hornstein as director of Public Works, Kim Lucas as director of Mobility and Infrastructure and Kathryn Vargas as director of Parks and Recreation. All three had been serving as acting director of their respective departments. Gainey nominated them in late April.

Hornstein, who has more than 20 years of experience in design, construction and maintenance of grounds and facilities, joined the city as a FUSE fellow in 2017. He had served as the assistant director of Public Works since 2018.

“I’ve really grown to love the people who work here and the work that we do,” he said during his interview with council last week.

Hornstein said he would like to bolster the city’s electric vehicle fleet and associated charging infrastructure.

Kail-Smith urged him to investigate delays on several city projects, after having received news that work on the West End Trolley Trail in her district was delayed.

“I’m seeing a lot of projects around the city being delayed and stalling, and it’s becoming concerning,” Kail-Smith said. “I think we need to get a handle on why all these delays are starting to occur, because it is a concern not only to us, but to our residents.”

Lucas joined the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure in 2019 as assistant director for planning, policy and permitting. She had previously served as a supervisory transportation branch manager for the Washington, D.C., Department of Transportation.

She told council members she was “deeply honored and humbled” by the opportunity to lead the department.

Lucas said the department is “in a situation where the resources don’t necessarily meet the need,” adding that it needs to find additional cash from grants or other entities. She said the department is also working to ensure it has an efficient strategy to prioritize areas of greatest need.

Lucas said officials may need to dedicate more funding to the department. She noted that landslide damage on a recent weekend resulted in about $300,000 in emergency response costs — nearly a third of the $1 million emergency response budget for the year.

When asked about delays on some city projects, Lucas said it’s an issue of “the balance between the workload volume with the staff we have” and miscommunications about progress.

She called for increased staffing capacity, noting that only three people are assigned to the department’s structures division, which is responsible for 150 bridges, several hundred retaining walls and sets of stairs, and landslide and flooding mitigation efforts.

Vargas previously worked as director of Allegheny Partners for Out-of-School Time at United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania and senior manager at United for Children before joining the city.

Vargas said the team in Parks and Recreation is “highly seasonal” and comprised of a large portion of part-time staff. Hiring, she said, has been tricky — though a higher pay rate for lifeguards has helped bolster applicants for those positions.

“I can confidently say at this point that we will be able to open more pools this year than we did last year,” she told council members last week, urging council members to consider higher pay rates for other seasonal and part-time positions to garner more applicants.

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