ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Allentown City Council voted Wednesday to update its ordinance on business licenses to raise the business license fee to $50 from $35.

The fee had been held at $35 since 1992, but since that time, the city has seen substantial growth in business development and has had to employ additional staff to administer the program.

The change seeks to align the fee to match the administrative and operating costs.

Councilmember Cristian Pungo said the update was a good opportunity to increase the fee and get the city reimbursed for the work that’s happening in order to process the business licenses. 

“But there is a greater conversation about how we can adjust the process to accommodate and allow for more entrepreneurship from our residents that want a business,” Pungo said. “Moving forward, I think there is a greater effort to want to look at the business license structure and see what we can do to help push small business.”

Road improvements

In other business, council passed an ordinance to amend the 2026 capital fund budget to provide for an increase of $1.1 million to fund an improvements project on Tilghman Street and Union Boulevard.

The city was awarded a Safe Streets implementation grant to fund the project.

Public works Director Mark Shahda said the grant puts the city in a position to make some key improvements along the corridor to make the roadways safer.

“Roughly half of the funding will be used towards the planning and the design portion, and the other half is going to be used for the construction and safety improvements that we’re going to undertake,” Shahda said.

“Part of the design process right now, early on, we’re looking at adding some bike lanes, bus lanes, doing some pavement markings along the Union Boulevard corridor to make the travel lanes a little bit tighter to help with reducing the overall speeds,” he said. “And obviously, we’re going to do some pedestrian improvements in terms of pedestrian infrastructure and crosswalks.”

The grant required a match from the city of 35%, which Shahda said is $275,000, and is available in the public works budget.