Community Corner

Q&A: Tracey Evans of Wilkinsburg Community Development Corporation

We recently sat down with the local executive director of the WCDC and here's what she had to say!

Tracey Evans, executive director of the Wilkinsburg Community Development Corporation and a council member since 2006 in the same borough, recently talked about her role in the community with Patch.

She's held the executive position role for about a year and a half and looks forward to a bright future for Wilkinsburg, where she has lived for 25 years.

How did you get involved in the community on this level?

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Back in 2004, I was only working part-time and being a stay-at-home mom and wanted to fix the park up in my neighborhood. I started going to council meetings and discovered there are a lot of other issues that needed to be solved. I met other folks who were also interested in getting involved and we started working together to do that.

It all started around the same time. In 2004, the governor sent his secretary of banking to meet with council about looking at long-term finances, keeping the borough stable and out of financial distress, because it already had been and a lot of municipalities are. He came in and discovered there are a lot of issues not just fixing the budget—declining revenues and increasing expenditures wasn’t going to work very well.

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They started a focus group between 2004 and 2006. We formed commitees, one of which was economic development, and one of those goals was establishing a main street program. In oder to do that, you needed a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated group, so we started forming that. From 2008 to 2010, it was all volunteer and then we finally had the funding for an executive director. I was asked by the board to take the position.

How have you seen the community transform?

One of the main things has been trying to stabilize local government. When I got started, we didn’t have stable management at the borough level. We had five police chiefs or five borough managers over 10 years—it was always changing, positions were always vacant. Since 2006, we have had the same directors and that was a big goal. Then being able to work on long term strategies with people in place and finally getting some continuity has been the next step. For instance, we have a full-time code director and we are looking at a lot of issues there. A very basic thing is he put all the permits you need for a permit all in one place, so you fill out one form. Across the board, departments have worked to improve their systems.

Another goal was building relationships across the county and the state. We have had consistent support with grant funding and have gotten a lot done that way. We also have been looking at shared services and ways to reduce costs and improving the services. We started purchasing our garbage collection through the City of Pittsburgh and have the same relationship with fire services. We are also working with Turtle Creek Valley COG and always looking for ways to provide a better service at a reduced cost. That frees us up to address things that have been neglected for a long time.

We are putting together plans for paving, demo is always an issue and we try to address it—maintenance of parks and infrastructure is always an issue.

People are extremely involved here. Every night there are various meetings going on here.

What are your long-term goals for the borough?

If Allegheny County and the city became one, we’d be much more competitive for funding. I believe Wilkinsburg should look at the pros and cons of becoming a part of the City of Pittsburgh and look at what that would mean for school, education and other areas.

We already use a lot of their services. It would be equalized enough to bring private investment back into the community. If the tax rate wasn’t so much higher here, people would be investing more in all of the properties here and put more money into the community.


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