Uncategorized

2/4/2026

By Kate Luxemburg

I have worked as a data analyst and data manager for over thirty years, now self-employed, retired from contracting; and I have been a homeowner in Wilkinsburg since 1974.  As a contractor, I was once assigned to PNC Bank to tag PNC customers in a dataset of “all credit-worthy individuals in the US.”  I went to my job eager to work with “big data.”  My interest in public data grew along with the power and storage available for personal computers.  I came to love working with Allegheny County data in my home office— 913,650 records in the current voter history file and 584,144 real estate parcels in the county assessment file.  The 130 Allegheny County municipalities can be compared with queries that join voter history and real estate data.  Which municipalities are far from the county average on which measures?  Wilkinsburg is large enough to be interesting and small enough to be well understood. This is one reason I continue to live here. (more…)

Two Recent Pittsburgh Initiatives
and the possibilities I see for Wilkinsburg

Staying inside to avoid the frigid weather, spending more time than usual reading news, I came across two recent Pittsburgh initiatives I want to mention to Wilkinsburg residents.  One is a website for advocacy journalism and the other is a proposed ordinance to create a Pittsburgh City council-sponsored dashboard that will publish counts of housing units, identifying them from newly constructed to declared unfit for occupancy.

Read More

WilkinsburgPA.gov — the official borough website — now has bios of the ten members of council whose current terms began this month.  Very good info!  Also check out the committee assignments and meeting dates.

Borough Council