Oakland 2025 Action Teams Hit the Ground Running
As summer winds down for many, the Oakland 2025 Community Plan has only just started to heat up. While the Pfaffmann + Associates consulting team begins creating the official plan document that will guide Oakland’s future, three early action teams are focusing their efforts on transportation planning, eliminating nuisance properties, and creating better linkage to city trails. “The idea was for residents and other stakeholders to come together and begin working on early action projects that can create positive change now while we continue to complete the plan. Even before the consultant team began their portion of this planning process, residents were already highly engaged in taking steps to make dreams for their community a reality” said OPDC’s Community Organizer, Tara Sherry-Torres. 
Sherry-Torres is working with one of these groups, which will work on transportation strategies for Oakland. “The action item that was put forward for voting and one of the three selected at the Action Forum in May involved combining the various shuttle bus systems in Oakland into one unified system,” said OPDC’s Executive Director, Wanda Wilson. “This is a terrific idea—effective transportation circulator service is a top priority for the community, and thus for the planning process. Because this idea involves a great deal of planning and analysis, the members of the action team determined that coordinating with the consultant team on this effort would be most effective,” says Ms. Wilson. “Some members of the community were led to believe that rather than coordinating with our consultant team to work on this, we were killing the idea altogether. I regret this misunderstanding and would like to assure everyone that it is a top priority for Oakland 2025.” Pfaffmann + Associates, and their team, which includes transportation firm Fitzgerald and Halliday, will be heavily involved in this group’s work to develop solutions for Oakland’s complex transportation needs.
A second action team is the reinstatement of a group that was once very active in Oakland: the Oakland Code Enforcement Task Force. Dedicated to eliminating the number of nuisance properties that plague the neighborhood, the group is comprised of residents, representatives of the Mayor’s office, City Council, the Pittsburgh Police, and our neighboring universities. “Congratulations to Oakland for reviving the Code Enforcement Task Force!” said Liz Style, Coordinator for the Operation Weed and Seed Program, Office of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl. “Mayor Ravenstahl believes that dedicated neighbors, like the members of the Task Force, partnering with the City to control blight and reduce crime is key to Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods continuing to grow and thrive.” If you know of a nuisance property in your neighborhood that’d you’d like the group to include in their efforts, please email oakwatch@opdc.org and a member of the Task Force will be in touch with you within a week. We are working with 311 to ensure these problems are addressed as efficiently as possible.
The third action team is working on connecting Oakland to the regional trail system. Called Rock Alley, this group was inspired by the name of the street that used to exist on the Oakcliffe hillside near Ophelia Street, where they plan to link the trail. This energetic group of residents and students has already begun reviewing potential design plans for the trail, which will ultimately connect West, Central and South Oakland to the Eliza Furnace Trail and Second Avenue. “It has been a really rewarding experience to be involved with the Oakland 2025 Plan” remarked University of Pittsburgh alumnus Justin Lamorella. “Even though the Action Team has only met three times, I am continually amazed by the drive and vigor in which the community has come together to enact real, visible change. The ‘green’ action group could have decided on any project, but set its sights high to create a physical link between Oakland and the Eliza Furnace Trail and 2nd Avenue. It’s inspiring to me to see how much a community can accomplish, and I think Oakland, and the whole City for that matter, will be very impressed with the work of the Action Team.”
It’s not too late for you and your neighbors to be a part of this exciting work. All three action teams welcome community participation. Check OPDC’s website and Facebook page regularly for meeting times and locations.
