City Council is teeming with young talent. Last month, "Right Here" profiled Dan Gilman, chief of staff for Councilman William Peduto, and Elaine Zelmanov, who runs Councilman Patrick Dowd's office. Today, we sit down with Joe Day, chief of staff for Councilman Jim Motznik.

Joe Day wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do with his life.

He decided to take some time off after high school, and wound up putting it off further after his and his mother's house burned down in 1999. He said he "couldn't abandon her" and managed a Perkins restaurant in Danville, his Central Pennsylvania hometown, until 2002.

He began his college career at the University of Pittsburgh's Bradford campus, where he was involved in student government. Though he majored in political science, he opted to relax a bit and not to get involved in campus affairs when he transferred to Pitt's Oakland campus, but decided to apply for the "Pitt in China" program the summer before his senior year.

And it was that experience that led Mr. Day, 28, to City Council.

Of all the places to discover a potential interest in city government, Mr. Day was playing Uno on Mount Everest with a woman who worked for a City Council member. She suggested that Mr. Day apply for an internship with Councilman Jim Motznik.

He interned for Mr. Motznik during his senior year, but then the "pre-graduation jitters" set in, he said, and he weighed whether he wanted to enter the work force or attend graduate school or law school.

The jitters didn't last long, because Mr. Motznik hired him as his policy adviser and scheduler before he even graduated from college. He was promoted to chief of staff at the beginning of 2008.

Since then, he's worked with Mr. Motznik on issues surrounding absentee landlords, graffiti problems and the enforcement of nuisance property legislation.

"I think the role of a council office is not just looking at overarching problems -- pension, deficits, debts -- but looking at quality-of-life issues," Mr. Day said.

"We can do something to fix the slum landlord problem in the city. We can put laws on the books to stop graffiti and vandals."

In addition to his work on City Council, Mr. Day is a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University and sits on the Propel Pittsburgh commission, a group Mayor Luke Ravenstahl started to discuss the needs of young people in Pittsburgh, namely how to bring young people to the 'Burgh and retain the 20-somethings already attending college in the city.

"People don't know the actual diversity of the city," Mr. Day said. He offered one small example: Fiori's Pizzaria on West Liberty Avenue in Brookline is "the best pizza in the city," though a lot of students probably don't know that because they rarely venture out of Oakland.

"It's not just Downtown and the universities," he said.

Once, at a meeting of the College Democrats at Pitt, a member told him, "No one cares about city government and city elections."

Mr. Day wishes that weren't the case.

He says it's important to get all students interested in city government, not just students who follow politics. He suggests internship opportunities in other areas -- for example, computer science majors could intern with City Information Systems or civil engineering majors could intern with City Planning. Whether they opt to stay in Pittsburgh after they graduate or not, Mr. Day says, the decisions of city government will affect them during their four years here.

"We need to keep these young people who come to college vested in the city," he said. "I think that's the hardest part anymore."