READING, Pa. \u2013 Reading City Council’s focus on Monday night was to get its legislation on the 2026 budget approved.<\/p>\n
It managed to do that, but one of the sacrifices was to cut the much-talked-about ice skating rink at a cost savings of about $600,000.<\/p>\n
The ill-fated project was a goal of Mayor Eddie Moran.<\/p>\n
After wrangling with the proposed budget for the past two months, Reading City Council voted to cut the proposed 9%\u00a0 increase to 6%.<\/p>\n
During the past year, sites for the proposed skating rink were rejected at a baseball field behind the Third and Spruce Recreation Center, and then later at a location in City Park.<\/p>\n
The final option the city was considering was next to a proposed slash pad at the site of the former hillside pool on North 14th\u00a0Street.<\/p>\n
For several months, council President Donna Reed had suggested that the city not spend money on the project and instead consider a rental agreement for skating at the existing Santander Arena, home of the Reading Royals.<\/p>\n
The city was facing a 9% tax increase, but council reduced that amount to a 6% hike Monday night after making some cuts to the budget, including the skating rink.<\/p>\n
This week, the city revealed a rink could join a proposed splash pad at the site of the former Hillside Pool on North 14th Street.<\/p>\n
When the topic came up, councilmembers questioned whether the newest location for the rink was already under contract.<\/p>\n
Finance Director Jamar Kelly said the bids for the rink were having to be redone because of the newest location change.<\/p>\n
“It is technically not under contract,” Kelly said.<\/p>\n
Unlike the other votes related to the budget, the decision to eliminate the rink from the 2026 capital project budget was a unanimous decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 Reading City Council’s focus on Monday night was to get its legislation on the 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2716,2005,2003,128,1095,130,129,12565,22187,30903],"class_list":{"0":"post-55843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-donna-reed","9":"tag-eddie-moran","10":"tag-jamar-kelly","11":"tag-reading-city","12":"tag-reading-city-council","13":"tag-reading-city-headlines","14":"tag-reading-city-news","15":"tag-santander-arena","16":"tag-skating-rink","17":"tag-third-and-spruce-recreation-center"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55843","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=55843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}