Joseph Sabino Mistick: Corey O'Connor must get ready to work

“Do the job you were hired to do or you’re fired” seems to be the message Pittsburgh voters sent on primary Election Day last week. For the second time in four years — with challenger Corey O’Connor’s defeat of sitting Mayor Ed Gainey — an incumbent mayor was denied reelection.

Both the Bill Peduto and Gainey administrations failed at the basics. They were unwilling or unable to address the shrinking police force, crumbling and snow-covered roads, sputtering city vehicles, broken-down and closed bridges. Both were estranged from many of the city’s major institutions.

Both lacked an economic development plan to modernize Downtown and increase revenue. Both allowed bureaucracy to slow and frustrate the permitting process for homeowners and businesses. And little progress was made on affordable housing by both administrations.

For O’Connor, the challenges not met by the previous disappointing administrations constitute a full work order. With little time to spare, he must begin thinking about his administration and establishing his agenda, even though he will not take office until January, after he wins the November general election.

O’Connor will need all the help he can get. But some of the tools he will need are already in place and have been used by mayors before. They would be a good start.

Neighborhood development groups should be permitted to take control of as many derelict city-owned properties as they can handle and improve them under the Abandoned and Blighted Property Conservatorship Act. This costs the city nothing and has been used successfully in Philadelphia and other parts of Allegheny County.

A simple and fast in-person permitting office should be established, like the one Mayor Pete Flaherty created in the 1970s. It was a series of service counters numbered 1 through 5 that allowed most property owners and contractors to get their permits within one day and get to work.

There have been “payment in lieu of taxes” agreements with our universities and hospitals in the past, and there can be again. The city’s ill-fated litigation against tax-exempt properties has been costly and unsuccessful. It is better to negotiate a fair payment and start depositing annual checks.

When the city was faced with an aging fleet of vehicles in the 1980s, Mayor Richard Caliguiri created the Equipment Leasing Authority to better finance the replacement of certain municipal vehicles. That can help again in these times of tight city finances.

When Mayor Sophie Masloff was confronted with warring drug gangs that were terrorizing the city, she partnered with then-U.S. Attorney Tom Corbett. They created a law enforcement task force that brought peace to our neighborhoods. A similar force composed of Allegheny County officers and sheriff’s deputies — with the cooperation of the city police union — can patrol Downtown and free city officers for the neighborhoods until the training academy and recruitment can catch up.

Like Mayor Tom Murphy, the new mayor must develop a capable staff to do site assembly and infrastructure modernization to compete nationally for the enormous investments being planned by some of the biggest tech, pharmaceutical and energy companies in America. And he must prepare to play a persistent role in the selling of our city as the best place for these companies to thrive.

Every Pittsburgh mayor in modern times has dealt with economic development with an “all hands on deck” policy that crosses party lines, includes construction unions and developers and relies on arm’s-length public-private partnerships. It is a winning formula that has been perfected in Pittsburgh. And it will work again.