Get To Know Pittsburgh Mayoral Candidate Thomas West

Thomas West is on the City Cast Pittsburgh podcast today, making his pitch to be Pittsburgh's next mayor. Here's a snippet of our interview.

What is Pittsburgh's biggest challenge right now?

I'm running on three main things. I'm running on public safety. We need a police chief. We're on number five right now, in one administration. So police chief, public safety is a definite — and that's police, firefighters, EMS. We have to make sure they're all budgeted.

Transparency in government — it doesn't matter where you come from politically, you need to have transparency in government to make good decisions and to actually hold elected officials accountable.

I'm a small business owner. I love entrepreneurship. Economics is another reason I'm running. There are too many neighborhoods that have been left behind, and there are many reasons for that. Every neighborhood should have great economics. That means jobs and mainstream businesses. I feel like we can tap into a younger generation and help transform some of those neighborhoods that have been left behind.

What is Pittsburgh's biggest opportunity?

There's a lot of great people in the city of Pittsburgh doing a lot of great work. There's a lot of ambition in the city, and I saw a lot of that when I opened my business in East Liberty in 2014.

I had moms coming to me who lived in Homewood [and] Lincoln-Lemington. They were asking me, how do they start their business? How do they take their business that they maybe already had to the next level? And I didn't have all the answers, but I told them what I knew. And then I also had teenagers from Obama Academy coming into my store who had ambition.

The problem I think we have in the city is we cap ourselves. Whether that's ordinances a city government puts into place [or] policies that we have, we're not kind right now to small business. I have a lot of hope in this city because we have so many great people doing great things and a lot of ambition. We just have to uncap it and live up to our full potential.

Why should someone vote for you May 20?

I think of things differently. I don't shy away from a challenge. I was a news producer for 15 years, where you have to live second by second by second. You have to make decisions quickly that actually will go on the air.

I didn't know anything about owning my own business. You jump in with two feet, and you make it work. You have to live within a budget, you have to make hard decisions, and you have to listen to your customers to make your business grow.

I feel like those are the things that are missing out of city government right now, and I feel like I can bring those to the table and open the discussion back up to everybody.

These questions have been lightly edited for length and clarity. For the full conversation, listen to the episode and check out our other installments: