{"id":59810,"date":"2025-12-13T04:18:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T04:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/59810\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T04:18:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T04:18:17","slug":"last-county-meetings-of-2025-planned-for-wednesday-budget-vote-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/59810\/","title":{"rendered":"Last county meetings of 2025 planned for Wednesday, budget vote expected"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lackawanna County commissioners will hold Wednesday their final public meeting of 2025, capping a turbulent year largely defined by former Commissioner Matt McGloin\u2019s late-February resignation and the bitter, monthslong vacancy battle that followed.<\/p>\n

Democratic Commissioner Bill Gaughan and Republican Commissioner Chris Chermak, the two constants on the board of commissioners this year, are expected to vote to approve the county\u2019s 2026 budget. Both have expressed support for the roughly $181 million spending plan that does not include a tax increase.<\/p>\n

Whether the budget vote will be unanimous remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

Democratic Commissioner Thom Welby, whose special election victory and late November swearing-in finally ended the McGloin-vacancy saga, is still weighing whether he\u2019ll vote for the budget. He expressed \u201cserious misgivings\u201d Friday about proposed overtime budgets for two unspecified county departments, but declined to elaborate further in the hope of resolving his concerns ahead of Wednesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n

Commissioners previously tabled a final vote on the budget Dec. 3, citing uncertainty over electricity costs the county will incur in 2026. The decision to delay the budget vote gave officials more time to quantify the impact of increasing electricity costs while also giving Welby more time to review the broader budget crafted before he took office on Nov. 25.<\/p>\n

A copy of the proposed budget, which was the subject of several public budget hearings following its release in mid-October, is available online at lackawannacounty.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s commissioners meeting, the first of several county meetings planned that day, will be held in the fifth-floor conference room of the county government center, 123 Wyoming Ave., Scranton, beginning at 10 a.m.<\/p>\n

The county pension and salary boards will meet there at 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m., respectively. Those sessions will bookend a county prison board meeting scheduled for 12:30 p.m. at the Lackawanna County Prison, 1371 N. Washington Ave., Scranton.<\/p>\n

Agendas for all four meetings will be posted online in advance of the sessions. To access agendas click the \u201cAgendas and Minutes\u201d link under the \u201cPublic Records\u201d tab at the top of the county\u2019s website.<\/p>\n

The commissioners will reorganize Jan. 5, and elect a board chairman and vice chairman for 2026.<\/p>\n

The board is currently without an official chairman after Chermak and former interim Democratic Commissioner Brenda Sacco ousted Gaughan as chairman during an unusual late-October reorganization. They voted at that time to make Sacco chairwoman of the board, but Welby replaced Sacco on the three-member body last month.<\/p>\n

Chermak, made vice chairman during the late-October reorganization, led the Dec. 3 commissioners meeting and is expected to do the same Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lackawanna County commissioners will hold Wednesday their final public meeting of 2025, capping a turbulent year largely defined…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,139,28,178,180,179,181],"class_list":{"0":"post-59810","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-lackawanna-county","9":"tag-local-news","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-scranton","13":"tag-scranton-headlines","14":"tag-scranton-news","15":"tag-top-stories-stt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59810","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=59810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}