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It's hard to appreciate a bustling marina if you can't afford a boat, Mayor Jim Brewster admits. So he understands why city residents --- more than 30 percent of whom live below the poverty line --- can get frustrated and angry over McKeesport's problems.

"It's easy for someone in another community to say, 'Hey, look how nice your bike trail is,'" Brewster says, "but if you live in McKeesport and you're on a street that hasn't been paved for 50 years, you're going to say, 'Hey, what about my street?'"

Since taking office seven years ago, Brewster has become McKeesport's biggest advocate, taking to newspapers, TV and radio almost weekly to defend the city's reputation, and regularly meeting with public and private officials to try and attract investment in Allegheny County's second-largest city.

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On Saturday, Brewster's efforts earned him the "Mayor of the Year" award from the Pennsylvania State Mayors' Association, which met at the Nittany Lion Inn in State College.

Brewster sounds grateful for the recognition, but is quick to add "it's not about me personally. It's about what I can do in the community with people's help. This isn't an individual sport --- it's a team sport."

In many ways, Brewster has taken up the mantle of the late Joseph Bendel, who became mayor in 1995, and who wore his love for McKeesport proudly.

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When Bendel retired in 1999, the role of "chief cheerleader" went dark, and for the next four years, headlines about McKeesport focused on backbiting, lawsuits and decline. Brewster and a revitalized city administration halted the tailspin.

But like Bendel --- who championed the city's creation of the McKees Point Marina and acquisition of the Palisades ballroom, two moves attacked by political opponents --- Brewster's relentless efforts to champion the city also have made him a focal point for criticism.

Residents have questioned why sidewalks were constructed along Walnut Street between the 15th Avenue Bridge and Christy Park, or why the city is rebuilding Fifth Avenue, Downtown, when most of the storefronts there are vacant.

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Retorts Brewster: How can the city expect to anyone to rent a storefront on a street with broken sidewalks and missing lampposts? (Both the Walnut and Fifth Avenue projects were paid for with state grants, not city tax money.)

Unlike a business that declares bankruptcy, or a person who dies, a city doesn't just fade away, he says.

"Time passes, and you have the same roads, the same buildings, they get old and then need to be replaced," Brewster says. "It's nobody's fault, it's called age."

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Keith Moss, who chaired the committee that honored Brewster, says he earned the award by working to attract investment while removing blighted buildings --- some of them vacant since the 1980s. The committee also was impressed by Brewster's personal involvement with crime prevention, including his "nighttime patrols" of problem areas.

He didn't know Brewster before the award ceremony, says Moss, mayor of Duryea Borough, a former coal-mining community near Wilkes-Barre in the eastern part of the state.

"We look to see what the mayor does in general --- what he accomplishes above and beyond his mayoral duty to the community," he says. Brewster was chosen from among seven nominees, and the vote was "unanimous," Moss says.

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Brewster wasn't planning to attend the mayors' convention and spent the morning at the Community Day of Peace anti-violence rally in Harrison Village. He had to be coaxed into traveling to State College Saturday afternoon by his assistant, Annette James, who submitted the nomination and knew in advance her boss had won.

"He had some assumption that McKeesport was being recognized for something," Moss says. "But when I started reading my introduction 'he's a 1966 graduate of McKeesport High School,' he realized what was going on."

Says Moss, laughing, "Annette told me he looked at her across the table and said, 'You're fired.'"

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Kidding aside, Brewster says it's difficult to overestimate the magnitude of the challenges facing McKeesport and other Mon Valley communities.

"We survived the runoff of businesses that happened 25 years ago, and then the second-largest economic collapse in history," he says. "We got domestic cancer --- not just McKeesport, but Clairton, Duquesne, Homestead --- it hit us hard. But we're still here."

It will take decades, not years, to repair the damage, Brewster says. "I wish could fast-forward and come back 50 years from now and see if any of our vision has come to pass," he says. "I think it will."

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The good news, Brewster argues, is that time is on McKeesport's side. Cities have a lifecycle, he says, and communities that bottom out begin working their way back up.

"It takes a lot of work and a lot of creativity," Brewster says. "For the next few decades, we've got a big hill to climb. The expectations of people in our community are very high, and there are so many needs."

Still, it's hard to convince people to build for the future when current problems are pressing, he says. "We've got such a high level of poverty, a high rate of unemployment, so many single parent families, people are very concerned about their individual needs," Brewster says.

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But Brewster, who says he plans to run for a third term in 2011, says new sense of community is developing across the city, and that "90 percent" of residents seem to have McKeesport's best interests in mind.

It would help, he says, if the other 10 percent would stop mocking their own city's problems and instead try to help.

"People across the country who want to expand their businesses are reading and watching the same things you are," Brewster says. "When you want someone to move into your city, why are you bashing it? What do you think you're accomplishing?"

Yet the mayor doesn't sound discouraged. "You can never let a small percentage of naysayers eat into your momentum," Brewster says. "I think the vast majority of people here really care about their city."

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