Ravenstahl's Vision Thing

Those of you that have been on the couch all weekend for Labor Day will, no doubt, have seen this report on Bob O'Connor's recently discovered "vision" for the City of Pittsburgh.

Eleven weeks after his inauguration, Bob O'Connor and key staff met with a consultant and began summarizing the vision critics had said he lacked and setting a course for the city during what they hoped would be just his first term as mayor.

That meeting started a behind-closed-doors process that resulted in a one-legal-size-page statement of 45 goals and strategies for the new administration. It was to be made available to all Pittsburghers in an effort to quiet the critics and give voters the means to decide if he was fulfilling his promises.

The final version arrived in the mayor's office in early August 2006 when Mr. O'Connor was in the hospital suffering the effects of a rare central nervous system lymphoma. He died on Sept. 1.

The vision statement, not released until now, reflects a novel attempt to plot the city's recovery on a single page. It also provides the clearest indication of what the late mayor was trying to achieve, and a means of gauging the legacy of his short-lived administration.

Well, it turns out that Bob's successor also has a Vision Statement which has been surreptitiously smuggled* out of 414 Grant Street and posted here for your viewing pleasure:



He really needs to work on that "Monkey Butler" thing.

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*I believe the proper term is "keistered."