ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 City officials are following in their state and federal counterparts\u2019 footsteps by failing to pass a budget on time.<\/p>\n
City Council fell short Tuesday night with an attempt to override Mayor Matt Tuerk’s Dec. 22 veto of the budget it passed five days prior.<\/p>\n
Council voted 4-3 to override the mayor’s veto, but the measure needed five of seven members\u2019 support to pass.<\/p>\n
Allentown City Council<\/p>\n
That plan would have kept the property-tax rate flat but raised the annual trash fee $135, as the mayor initially requested.<\/p>\n
Tuerk shot down council’s budget and called on members to compromise before the Dec. 31 deadline.<\/p>\n
But there was no budging on budget stances Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Council voted 4-3 to override the mayor’s veto, but the measure needed five of seven members\u2019 support to pass.<\/p>\n
Members Cynthia Mota, Ce-Ce Gerlach, Ed Zucal and Natalie Santos voted to override Tuerk\u2019s veto; Santo Napoli, Daryl Hendricks and Candida Affa voted against it.<\/p>\n
That was the same vote by which council approved its budget this month. <\/p>\n
Hendricks tried to introduce another compromise proposal \u201cif only to go through the motions,\u201d but he was blocked by council’s bylaws.<\/p>\n
That leaves the city without a 2026 budget.<\/p>\n
Budget vote first priority in new year<\/p>\n
Tuerk told LehighValleyNews.com he expected his initial budget proposal \u2014 which called for a 3.96% property-tax increase and a $135 raise in trash-related fees \u2014 would take effect if his veto withstood council’s scrutiny.<\/p>\n
But city voters in 2019 removed what’s known as a \u201cdefault budget” from Allentown’s home-rule charter months after then-Mayor Ray O’Connell used a last-minute budget veto to implement a 27% tax raise.<\/p>\n
The 2026 budget likely will be the first order of business for council \u2014 and its two new members \u2014 in early January.<\/p>\n
Cristian Pungo and Jeremy Binder will replace Hendricks and Zucal after besting the incumbents in this spring’s Democratic primary.<\/p>\n
The newcomers will have to quickly get up to speed on city finances as they hold the key votes on future proposals, with current members\u2019 stances well-established.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 City officials are following in their state and federal counterparts\u2019 footsteps by failing to pass…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,38871,38872,2748,121,120,3879,3553],"class_list":{"0":"post-75548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-2026-budget-veto","10":"tag-allentown-budget-2026","11":"tag-allentown-city-council","12":"tag-allentown-headlines","13":"tag-allentown-news","14":"tag-allentown-taxes","15":"tag-mayor-matt-tuerk"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75548","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=75548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}