Published January 13. 2026 02:48PM<\/p>\n
Northampton County Council adopted a $503 million budget for 2026 by a 7-2 vote at its Dec. 4, 2025, meeting. Council also voted to keep the real estate tax rate at 10.8 mills, rejecting a proposed increase to 11.8.<\/p>\n
During the public comment period of the meeting, Lehigh Valley IronPigs President and General Manager Kurt Landes asked council to reconsider slashing the baseball team\u2019s hotel tax grant application from $25,000 to $2,500.<\/p>\n
The funds supported hosting the Savannah Bananas Banana Ball event at Coca-Cola Park in Allentown, a fast-paced exhibition baseball event that sold out in 35 minutes last year, according to Landes.<\/p>\n
He said the IronPigs do not earn ticket revenue from Banana Ball; instead, he said, the event generates significant tourism and economic impact across Northampton County and IronPigs Charities donates $1.5 million to Northampton County nonprofits.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m concerned that this might weaken our application for future (Banana Ball) events,\u201d Landes said.<\/p>\n
The reallocated $22,500 is going to cultural groups like Moravian Historical Society, Easton Book Festival, SouthSide Film Institute, Touchstone Theater and others.<\/p>\n
Councilman Jeff Warren said that although he had voted for that reallocation, the IronPigs deserve more consideration for 2027.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf organizations like Banana Ball want to come here in the future, they\u2019re going to want to see some sort of regional and community-based investment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A contentious budget amendment discussion arose regarding reallocating funds to Lehigh Valley Planning Commission. Councilman John Brown proposed shifting $461,375 from future Grow NORCO grants to increase LVPC funding from $625,000 to $1,086,375, arguing it met the needs presented by the commission and aligned with Lehigh County\u2019s contribution.<\/p>\n
Although council Vice President John Goffredo felt the bump-up was too much, he agreed LVPC deserves more than $625,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cDevelopment is on the rise in Northampton County and the Lehigh Valley. They\u2019re doing more work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Opposition arose over fiscal constraints. According to Councilman Ken Kraft, LVPC has a budget surplus.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just can\u2019t see giving them half a million dollars when we\u2019re in this situation we\u2019re in right now with budgets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Warren said he supported LVPC but added, \u201cWe\u2019re at a point where we\u2019re asking hundreds of thousands of dollars in future grants when we don\u2019t necessarily know how things are going to be looking in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Council President Lori Vargo Heffner proposed reducing the amount to $365,000. Her proposal passed by a 6-3 vote.<\/p>\n
Outgoing Councilman Ron Heckman also gave an extended critique of the county\u2019s finance strategy, using the employee pay scale issue as a springboard to broader concerns about spending and structural costs in areas like corrections and Gracedale Nursing Home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published January 13. 2026 02:48PM Northampton County Council adopted a $503 million budget for 2026 by a 7-2…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":{"0":"post-85810","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85810","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=85810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}