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Dr. Cyril Wecht - Introductory Remarks: While economic growth and development unquestionably is the engine that drives everything we have been talking about, there are other things, which, although indirectly, tangentially related, are not on all fours with economic growth and development. You can have a lot of economic growth and development but still not change the image of Pittsburgh. Perception is extremely important and often supersedes reality.
We have to do a lot of work internally with our own population to disabuse them of some of the old notions and concepts of Pittsburgh. We have to work tactfully, diplomatically but continuously to break down some of the small-mindedness, the provincialism that permeates Pittsburgh. While many of these attitudes are primarily responsible for the great advantages that we boast of -- the friendliness, neighborliness, ethnic enclaves, disproportionately low crime rates -- it is the combination of all those same features, paradoxically, that leads us into hesitation, skepticism and recalcitrance not to boldly move forward. Everything is as if it is something new that has not been done in America. If we talk about building a building or a road, nobody else has done this. In the meantime, I can go to New York City and right in the heart of Manhattan, I walk around and then come back six months later and there is a new, 70-story skyscraper. How do they do it? And I dare say when Tom Murphy talks about many companies saying, "Oh, Pittsburgh is not on our list" and so on, I’ll bet if you were able to pin them down, you would probably find that there is no real reason. It’s not that we don’t like your climate, or we think your people are lousy, or we don’t like rivers, or we don’t like hillsides. It’s not that. They are thinking of Pittsburgh. We know when people come to Pittsburgh, they say "Oh, this is Pittsburgh. Gee, I didn’t really realize." They are expecting soot and smog and filth. So, we have got to change that. Regarding the differentiation of the role of the county executive from the role of the county manager: I have just always felt that I have time to make minor decisions as well as major ones. It doesn’t seem to take away from my time and my thinking. I am not about to turn over things to the county manager. The county manager is going to work for me. Sure, I’m not going to deal with who gets hired or works in the park or something like that. But I don’t just see myself as an ambassador of good will. A reasonable governmental analogy is between a president and a prime minister of a western democracy. A president is ceremonial and functional in those kinds of things, and the prime minister deals with the government. I don’t see myself as the president, and my manager as being prime minister. I expect to be the prime minister and the president. And the manager will be working for me. The manager is going to be my key person, but he is not going to be me in terms of things that count. Next: Jim Roddey
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Dr. Cyril Wecht