Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti has proposed legislation to city council for public safety initiatives, including funding the purchase of a building next to City Hall for a municipal annex that has a Police Department \u201creal time crime center.\u201d<\/p>\n
A split council in December approved the $1.88 million purchase of the Fidelity Bank branch at 334-346 N. Washington Ave. for an annex to City Hall at 340 N. Washington Ave., and the city put down a $188,000 deposit.<\/p>\n
At that time, the bank was renovating the nearby Scranton Electric Building at 507 Linden St. into a headquarters and would vacate the branch. The renovation nears completion and Fidelity recently vacated the branch.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, bank and city officials said they expected a closing on the city\u2019s purchase of the branch building to occur in mid-July.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Cognetti announced she sent two ordinances for introduction at council\u2019s meeting Tuesday to fund public safety initiatives throughout the city, including transferring funds within city accounts to fund the purchase of the former bank branch and to also buy surveillance cameras for parks.<\/p>\n
The two pieces of legislation move money around from different accounts to achieve those objectives, city Business Administrator Eileen Cipriani said Friday.<\/p>\n
One ordinance would amend the city\u2019s 2026 capital budget by $1,089,067 and involve reallocating federal block grant and other funding to buy out lease payments on Scranton Fire Department\u2019s Rescue 1 vehicle, \u201cto save on interest payments and to purchase the property at 334-336 North Washington Avenue for the development of a Real Time Crime Center\u201d for the Police Department and other City Hall operations that will improve disabled accessibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur investment in a Real Time Crime Center in downtown Scranton will provide the brave men and women at SPD with even greater resources they need to help keep our community safe,\u201d Cognetti said in a statement. \u201cInvesting in our police department has been a top priority for my administration, and it\u2019s important we continue to support state-of-the-art technology and training for SPD as they put their lives on the line daily to keep our residents safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police Chief Thomas Carroll also said in a statement: \u201cThe development of a Real Time Crime Center will enhance SPD\u2019s ability to keep Scranton safe by improving the agency\u2019s readiness, and response, while improving officer safety. We are grateful for Mayor Cognetti\u2019s leadership and advocacy on behalf of SPD. These investments will ensure the police department has the best tools and technology to meet any public safety challenge that may impact the safety of our residents and our visitors.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other ordinance would allow for purchasing additional surveillance cameras and upgrading Police Department operations by reallocating $366,000. That amount would come from closing three accounts called \u201cspecial city accounts\u201d that total $190,991 and repurposing a different special cities fund that has accumulated $175,547 in unallocated interest.<\/p>\n
The council meeting is scheduled for Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti has proposed legislation to city council for public safety initiatives, including funding the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,139,28,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-229263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229263","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=229263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}