It’s a chance once a year for the mayor to present the progress made in our area’s largest city. <\/p>\n
SCRANTON, Pa. \u2014 The then and now of the City of Scranton, that is the takeaway from this year’s State of the City address by Mayor Paige Cognetti.<\/p>\n
Joined by colleagues, city leaders, and friends, Scranton’s first female mayor spent the morning inside Leahy Hall at the University of Scranton, going over what her teams accomplished over her tenure.<\/p>\n
“These relationships that we have built over what is now, it’s now our 7th year, are really, really, really important to me personally, as much as they are to the city. So thank you all for being here,” said Mayor Cognetti, (D) Scranton.<\/p>\n
Touting the success of reviving a nearly bankrupt city to highlighting its recent steps forward. Cognetti had a lot to discuss.<\/p>\n
Some of the big-ticket items were the revamping of city government, a continued push to rebuild city parks and recreation sites, bolstering the police and fire service, and nearly 1,100 new places people can call home.<\/p>\n
“We are expanding the housing stock in Scranton. This is the issue across the country. Ask any mayor in any city, any town, any county in the whole country, what is the biggest issue you have? You’re probably going to get housing,” said Cognetti.<\/p>\n
“And so we take pride in how the city has made such great strides in recent years in stabilizing its finances, in providing greater efficiency with services and transactions, and modernizing and streamlining operations,” said Rev. Joseph G. Marina, University of Scranton President.<\/p>\n
Speakers representing the university and the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce also acknowledged the city’s success, which they say can be seen by just taking a stroll or short drive through downtown.<\/p>\n
“When you’re seeing all this construction, it’s real, it’s not a thought, it’s not a plan anymore, it’s the implementation of a real plan, and that’s what we’re seeing,” said Bob Durkin, Scranton Chamber President.<\/p>\n
Some upcoming excitement for Scranton includes the reopening of the new Nay Aug Park pool and recreation area this summer, being named a FIFA Fan Zone for the upcoming World Cup, and the celebration of Scranton’s 160th and America’s 250th birthdays.<\/p>\n
“Done a lot together, and we have much, much more to do. Thank you,” said Cognetti.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s a chance once a year for the mayor to present the progress made in our area’s largest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-173152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-scranton","9":"tag-scranton-headlines","10":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}