Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti will propose a city operating budget for 2026 that does not raise municipal taxes, she announced Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cFollowing years of responsible fiscal and project management, we are pleased to announce that the 2026 Budget will keep tax rates flat,\u201d Cognetti said in a statement. \u201cI appreciate our skilled team at City Hall for controlling costs, completing projects within budget and respecting taxpayer dollars as we continue building a capable, responsive, transparent city government.\u201d<\/p>\n
The operating budget, which has not yet been released, will eventually go to Scranton City Council for review and action.<\/p>\n
Detailing expected revenues and expenditures, a Scranton operating budget must be proposed annually by the mayor to council by Nov. 15, the announcement said. Public hearings on the budget also must take place by Dec. 1, after which council may adopt or amend the budget by Dec. 15.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are making progress in Scranton without hurting our taxpayers,\u201d Scranton City Council President Gerald Smurl said in the announcement. \u201cI look forward to reviewing the proposed 2026 budget with the rest of City Council knowing we can offer our residents some relief.\u201d<\/p>\n
If enacted by the mayor and council, a no-tax-hike budget for 2026 would be the fourth of six annual budgets that did not raise taxes under Cognetti\u2019s tenure as mayor.<\/p>\n
The budgets for 2021, 2022 and 2025 did not raise taxes.<\/p>\n
The budgets for 2023 and 2024 each had a 2% tax hike.<\/p>\n
As an example of a no-tax-hike budget, the $113.1 million budget for 2025 maintained the property, wage (earned-income), payroll, local services and real estate transfer taxes, and the $300 annual trash fee.<\/p>\n
According to the announcement, the city\u2019s \u201ccontinued positive economic growth\u201d in recent years has included: in 2022, finally successfully exiting state Act 47 oversight after 30 years of being designated as financially distressed; and in April receiving the Secretary\u2019s Award for Municipal Excellence from Pennsylvania\u2019s Department of Community and Economic Development.<\/p>\n
Also, in 2023 \u2014 and for the first time since 2011 \u2014 the credit rating firm Standard & Poor\u2019s upgraded the city\u2019s bond rating to an investment-grade level of BBB-. Then, in 2024, the city achieved an uncommon two-notch jump in its credit rating to BBB+, and with a positive outlook. Credit ratings on municipal borrowing through bonds impact the amount of interest paid on the debt. A higher credit rating reflects financial stability and translates into lower interest rates. A lower credit rating \u2014 or worse, no rating at all \u2014 reflects distress or uncertainty and translates into higher interest rates.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s announcement of a no-tax-increase budget for 2026 came 15 days before the Nov. 4 general election, when both Cognetti and Smurl are seeking re-election.<\/p>\n
Mayor since January 2020, Cognetti won a special election in 2019 running as an independent to fill an unexpired term and then switched back to Democrat and won a full, four-year term in 2021. Now seeking reelection to a second, four-year mayoral term, Cognetti faces Republican Patricia \u201cTrish\u201d Beynon and independents Eugene \u201cGene\u201d Barrett and Rik Little. Barrett initially planned to run in the 2025 Democratic primary for mayor but then didn\u2019t and decided instead to run as an independent.<\/p>\n
The council race has three four-year council terms up for grabs. Smurl initially ran in the Democratic primary but withdrew in March amid issues with signatures on his nomination petitions.<\/p>\n
The other council candidates are Virgil Argenta, Patrick Flynn, Sean McAndrew, Marc Pane and incumbent Councilman Tom Schuster.<\/p>\n
Flynn, McAndrew and Schuster won the Democratic primary, while Pane won the GOP primary. Argenta lost in the Democratic primary but received enough Republican write-in votes to win a GOP nomination. McAndrew also secured a Republican nomination through GOP write-in votes.<\/p>\n
Cognetti has endorsed Smurl in the council election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti will propose a city operating budget for 2026 that does not raise municipal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[990,7975,7973,3934,7974,7972,5881,178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-9618","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-city-council","9":"tag-cognetti","10":"tag-credit-rating","11":"tag-democratic-primary","12":"tag-gerald-smurl","13":"tag-operating-budget","14":"tag-paige-gebhardt-cognetti","15":"tag-scranton","16":"tag-scranton-headlines","17":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9618","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=9618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}