ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 Allentown City Council heard a proposal from the administration Wednesday night for an alternative property tax and trash rate.<\/p>\n
Finance Director Bina Patel said the administration is proposing to council that the 3.96% tax increase be kept in the 2026 budget and the trash rate be decreased by $25.<\/p>\n
Two weeks ago, council rejected Mayor Matthew Tuerk’s proposed 3.96% tax increase by voting to amend the proposed 2026 budget.<\/p>\n
Most of the council felt the financial shortfall in the mayor’s $246 million spending plan could be closed by using the city’s healthy $50 million fund balance.<\/p>\n
On top of the proposed tax increase, there was a $140 increase to the annual trash bill, which would have brought the annual residential trash bill to $740.<\/p>\n
In the revised version, the hike in the trash fee would be $115, making the trash bill $715.<\/p>\n
“This is a more balanced approach where we can keep the property tax increase, which will generate a revenue of $1.5 million for the general fund,”\u00a0Patel said. “What the proposal is showing is that bottom line impact to the taxpayers on fixed income and limited income is actually less or there’s a savings to them.”<\/p>\n
Patel said the higher impacts would be to the higher value properties.<\/p>\n
“What this scenario is showing you is that the impact to the property owners on a fixed income and smaller parcel is either savings or lesser of an impact versus a larger parcel,” Patel explained. “So, this new proposal is actually assisting the taxpayers on a smaller parcel, fixed income or limited income.”<\/p>\n
Councilmember Ed Zucal was not impressed with the proposal.<\/p>\n
“What you’re doing here is you’re just kicking the can down the road because at some point, you’re going have to make up that $25. Dollars next year or the year after because we have a (trash hauler) contract,” Zucal said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Patel said the city would loan the solid waste fund the difference between the $740 per unit and $715 per unit, which would equal about $1 million.<\/p>\n
“So this is a nice idea,” Zucal said. “I appreciate you trying to help the citizens, but down the road, they’re going to pay it back anyway.<\/p>\n
“So you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he said.<\/p>\n
Patel said that isn’t the case, as the “small increase in property tax” would be a recurring source of revenue she said the city needs to keep its financial stability strong to maintain its credit rating for future projects.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Ce-Ce Gerlach said the idea was a good effort but said the reality of a tax increase means that landlords use that as an excuse to raise rents, which hurts the low-income residents of the city.<\/p>\n
Council has scheduled a special meeting on Dec. 10 at 6 p.m. to make any decisions on proposed amendments to the 2026 budget.<\/p>\n
The budget is then expected to be adopted at the regular meeting, following the special meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 Allentown City Council heard a proposal from the administration Wednesday night for an alternative property…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[29454,119,29452,2748,121,120,2750,3000,29455,29453],"class_list":{"0":"post-51848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-2026-proposed-budget","9":"tag-allentown","10":"tag-allentown-administration","11":"tag-allentown-city-council","12":"tag-allentown-headlines","13":"tag-allentown-news","14":"tag-ce-ce-gerlach","15":"tag-ed-zucal","16":"tag-finance-director-bina-patel","17":"tag-trash-fee-increase"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51848","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=51848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}