Allentown City Council cancelled its Wednesday evening meeting, when it was scheduled to finalize the city\u2019s 2026 budget.<\/p>\n
The meeting was cancelled due to snow and winter weather, council Vice President Cynthia Mota said. The region was under a winter weather advisory until 6 p.m.<\/p>\n
The meeting will be rescheduled for Tuesday, Dec. 16.<\/p>\n
The cancellation comes as Mayor Matt Tuerk and a majority of council members are at odds over a proposed tax increase in the budget. City Council in a 5-2 vote last month stripped the 4% property tax increase proposed by Tuerk, and proposed instead taking an additional $1.5 million from the city\u2019s cash reserves to balance the 2026 budget.<\/p>\n
However, three council members \u2014 Santo Napoli, Daryl Hendricks and Candida Affa \u2014 have signed on to a compromise proposal, according to Wednesday\u2019s meeting agenda. That compromise would keep the tax increase at 4% but reduce the increase in city trash fees by $25.<\/p>\n
Trash fees are slated to rise by $140 next year for residents, from $605 to $740, in order to cover the increasing costs the city faces due to a new trash contract with J.P. Mascaro and Sons. The compromise proposal would put next year\u2019s trash fees at $715, and would instead \u201cloan\u201d $800,000 from the city\u2019s cash reserves to the city\u2019s solid waste fund to make up the difference.<\/p>\n
Mayor Matt Tuerk has threatened to veto the 2026 budget if council passes it without a tax increase. He has said a tax increase is necessary to maintain the city\u2019s essential services, but opponents on city council have said that poor Allentown residents cannot afford a tax increase.<\/p>\n
Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at Liweber@mcall.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Allentown City Council cancelled its Wednesday evening meeting, when it was scheduled to finalize the city\u2019s 2026 budget.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[119,153,155,154,433,182,139,28,50,432],"class_list":{"0":"post-57866","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-bethlehem","10":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","11":"tag-bethlehem-news","12":"tag-lehigh-county","13":"tag-local-news","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-pennsylvania","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57866","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=57866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}