Last night, I decided to be a patriotic Pittsburgher and meet my City Council member, Andrew Marsdale. He’s a relative newcomer - only elected a few years ago - but I like him a lot and he manages to do a lot of good for the Downtown area.

The meeting was held at a small café near my apartment and by the time I got there it was already full and Mr. Marsdale had already begun talking about the work he’s been doing on City Council. He’s particularly interested in the high-speed rail initiative that Students for a Sustainable Pittsburgh has been pushing for, so he talked about that a lot. Basically, he’s excited for it, and so are the mayor and a few other council members, but there are still some voices on the council who don’t see the importance of the tri-state rail system for Pittsburgh. They think that other cities in the area should take care of it.

But Marsdale disagrees. He thinks that the city of Pittsburgh is one of the foremost leaders in the region, and that while of course we need to reach out to other major cities, we should be taking the lead in developing this project. Most of the constituents who were there agreed.

Afterwards, he answered a few questions from people. I didn’t get a chance to ask him about anything, but I was pleasantly surprised that he praised the work the Pittsburgh Women’s Foundation is doing with girls in the public school system. Not bad when your council person recognizes your organization for being so awesome!