Lackawanna County will hold its first public budget hearing Tuesday on its roughly $190 million preliminary spending plan for 2027 — a draft budget that doesn’t include a property tax hike but did carry a roughly $4 million deficit when officials unveiled it earlier this month.
Budget hearings give the public an opportunity to provide input on and ask questions about the preliminary fiscal blueprint, which remains a work in progress pending final passage later this year. Officials are currently in the process of trying to close the shortfall between budgeted revenues and expenditures without raising property taxes, something county Chief Financial Officer David Bulzoni acknowledged would be difficult when the county released the draft budget Oct. 15.
While work to close the deficit gap is ongoing, Bulzoni also warned that failure to address a structural deficit problem perpetuated by annual expenditure growth outpacing that of revenues could have a compounding effect in future years. The draft budget the county presented earlier this month already reflected considerable efforts to shrink what was a $9 million shortfall to $4 million, a reduction achieved through cuts and the factoring in of several nonrecurring revenue sources.
A tax increase commissioners hope and at least tentatively plan to avoid would bolster recurring revenues and help mitigate the structural deficit problem, but it would also further burden property owners hit in 2025 with a nearly 33% tax hike. That precipitous increased helped eliminate what was a massive structural deficit, but didn’t stop subsequent expenditure growth driven by increasing healthcare costs, inflation and other factors.
Expenses in the preliminary 2027 budget grew by more than $9.2 million compared to the county’s 2026 budget, a 5.1% increase, while revenue from property taxes, the county’s largest recurring revenue source, is projected to increase by just $267,324, or 0.26%. Those figures help show how structural deficits can happen and worsen if unaddressed.
PFM Group Consulting LLC, the county’s financial consultant and the firm behind its multiyear financial management plan, has recommended commissioners consider regular, incremental tax increases to keep pace with expenditure growth.
Bulzoni, who’s echoed that recommendation, discussed the county’s fiscal challenges and deficit-closing efforts upon the release of the draft budget, and will give a similar presentation during Tuesday’s budget hearing at the South Abington Twp. Municipal Building, 104 Shady Lane Road. That session, the first of four the county will hold between now and Nov. 9, begins at 6 p.m.
Subsequent hearings are scheduled for Thursday and Nov. 5 at the Dickson City and Spring Brook Twp. municipal buildings, respectively, with both beginning at 10 a.m. The final hearing will be held Nov. 9 in the fifth-floor conference room of the county government center in downtown Scranton, also beginning at 10 a.m.
A copy of the preliminary 2027 budget is available online at lackawannacounty.org.