council voted 4-3 on Dec. 17 to reject a compromise Mayor Matt Tuerk supported<\/a> that would have increased taxes 3.96% and reduced a scheduled increase in city trash fees by $50.<\/p>\nCouncil members Cynthia Mota, Natalie Santos, Ed Zucal and Ce-Ce Gerlach instead voted to reject the tax increase and keep the full $140 city trash fee rise, which will bring the annual fee to $740. Council members Daryl Hendricks, Candida Affa and Santo Napoli voted in favor of the mayor\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n
Five council members would have to vote in favor of overriding Tuerk\u2019s veto.<\/p>\n
Continued high inflation means city residents can\u2019t afford a tax increase, opponents of the mayor\u2019s compromise plan argued. However, if another compromise is not reached to override the mayor\u2019s veto, Tuerk\u2019s proposed budget will go into effect on Jan. 1.<\/p>\n
In a letter to City Council explaining his veto of their amended budget plan, Tuerk said, \u201cMy reasoning is simple: the amended budget does not adequately increase revenue to meet the City\u2019s rising costs, and we cannot jeopardize our financial health by using our limited cash reserves to balance our budget.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reduced federal funding means depleting cash reserves without increasing revenue and would put the city at financial risk, Tuerk wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cAllentown must continue to keep our public spaces clean and our residents safe while also providing our employees with livable wages and competitive benefits \u2014 all while maintaining fiscal responsibility. We must raise revenue. A City that tries to live off cash cannot survive long,\u201d Tuerk said.<\/p>\n
The mayor\u2019s office has calculated that 23,000 out of 26,000 households in Allentown would save money under Tuerk\u2019s compromise proposal, because property taxes are calculated according to a home\u2019s assessed value, meaning those with lower-value homes would pay less, as the tax increase would be offset by the savings in their trash fees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Allentown City Council will meet Tuesday as an end-of-year deadline approaches to determine whether the mayor or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,433,182,139,28,432],"class_list":{"0":"post-71056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-headlines","10":"tag-allentown-news","11":"tag-lehigh-county","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-pennsylvania","15":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71056","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=71056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71056\/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=71056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}