SCRANTON \u2014 City council introduced legislation from Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti to fund the $1.88 million purchase of a building next to City Hall for a municipal annex that includes a police \u201cReal Time Crime Center,\u201d but then tabled it to get information on total costs and the long-term plan for use of the addition.<\/p>\n
Council voted 5-0 Tuesday \u2014 with council President Tom Schuster, Patrick Flynn, Mark McAndrew, Sean McAndrew and Jessica Rothchild all in favor \u2014 to introduce an ordinance that assembles over $1 million in city funds for the acquisition of the former Fidelity Bank branch at 334-346 N. Washington Ave. A prior council authorized the purchase in December.<\/p>\n
This 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, to save on interest payments and to purchase the property for the Police Department and other City Hall operations to improve disabled accessibility, the mayor said Friday.<\/p>\n
Cognetti also proposed to council an ordinance that 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
Council members also voted 5-0 Tuesday to introduce the other ordinance. They did not table it.<\/p>\n
Council tabled the annex ordinance to request information on the administration\u2019s overall plan, including costs of maintenance, moving and insurance and specifically how the annex would be used by the city and departmental costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s information us as council need to know, need to see first,\u201d Sean McAndrew said, noting council has not seen the inside of building or plans or designs for its use. \u201cAlso, the most important question, what\u2019s the total cost? \u2026 So let\u2019s sit back, let\u2019s ask for the information.\u201d<\/p>\n
In December, the prior council voted 3-2 to approve the city purchase of the bank branch for an annex to City Hall at 340 N. Washington Ave., and the city put down a $188,000 deposit. 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. Last week, bank and city officials said they expected a closing on the city\u2019s purchase of the former bank branch to occur in mid-July.<\/p>\n
Schuster and Mark McAndrew in December voted against the purchase, while Rothchild and former council members Gerald Smurl and Bill King approved it.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Schuster said, \u201cAs I said last year, I\u2019m concerned about expanding the footprint of government. I understand we\u2019ve purchased that building and it was one of my concerns \u2026 but I do think council does need to know what\u2019s going to be the end price. We need to see the end goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mark McAndrew said, \u201cIt should be tabled. Tell us more\u201d about the annex plan.<\/p>\n
Flynn added, \u201cThis is council\u2019s role, to ask questions and get the answers, especially on something with this big of a financial impact.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rothchild said, \u201cI agree with my colleagues that there are questions that need to be answered and we want more details regarding the plans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schuster suggested council ask the administration to attend a caucus to provide more information on the annex plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON \u2014 City council introduced legislation from Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti to fund the $1.88 million purchase of…\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-233206","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\/233206","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=233206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233206\/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=233206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}