Pittsburgh Councilman William Peduto said he plans to propose changes to the City Code that would alter the process for deciding which streets get paved.

"Paving of streets right now is not determined through need and is not a transparent system," he said. "Public works and public safety are the two most important functions of local government, and people should be assured that their services are being delivered by merit, and not by politics."

The Post-Gazette reported today that the city will pave 40 miles of its 800 miles of asphalt streets this year, or just 5 percent of its roads. A review of the list of streets tentatively slated for paving shows that three of nine council members, and at least 30 Democratic Committee leaders and members, will see the streets they live on or streets that are very close to their homes paved this year.

The city in 1999 abandoned a computer program that helped plan which streets to pave in favor of a more subjective process involving observations by public works division chiefs and referrals from council members, committee members, community leaders and regular citizens.

Mr. Peduto said he'd propose changes to the code before council's August recess. He said the proposal will mandate that the city craft a three-to-five-year paving plan based on data on street composition and traffic and post the plan on the Internet for public perusal. The city would have to base 90 percent of its paving spending on the computer-assisted plan, with the remaining 10 percent reserved for unforeseen situations.

He said this would be one of a raft of proposals.

"There's going to be a lot of initiatives like that to take the bolts out of the political machine," said Mr. Peduto, who dropped out of the race for mayor last month and is trying to forge his backers into a "think tank" of reform ideas.

Mr. Peduto's proposal might have a difficult time passing. There seems to be support on council for the current method of decision making.

Getting streets on the paving list is "my job," said Council President Doug Shields. "I'm the representative of the people of the 5th Council District."

He said council members might want to increase the paving budget from $9 million to the $13.5 million it would take to keep up with the wear-and-tear on the streets, but it has been constrained from changing the budget by the state Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, which oversees city spending.

"They approved the budget, not me," he said. "People wonder why the council members have to scramble around the back doors to get things done because we represent the citizens of Pittsburgh."

More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.