Council questions management-level raises included in proposed 2023 Scranton budget

Nov. 11—SCRANTON — Several city council members voiced concerns about the extent of management-level raises included in Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti's 2023 budget proposal — a proposal that would also hike taxes.

The mayor and members of her administration presented Thursday an overview of the proposed $116.8 million spending plan during a council caucus. The proposed budget, which is subject to changes prior to final passage, would raise property taxes by 3%.

The increase, which would be the first since 2020 and the first of Cognetti's administration, is designed to offset inflation's impact on city operations and counterbalance declining assessed real estate valuation. Scranton lost about $8.3 million of assessed value between 2019 and 2022, resulting in a loss of about $587,953 in would-be property tax revenue this year, the budget notes.

Raising taxes 3% would generate $957,144 in new revenue and cost a typical homeowner about $25 more next year, officials said Thursday. The financial impact on individual taxpayers would vary based on their property's assessed values for land and buildings.

To bring the city more in line with other Pennsylvania cities, the budget also proposes a number of management-level salary increases. Among other increases, for example, it would raise the annual salary of the Department of Public Works director position by $18,200, to $80,000, and that of the parks and recreation director by $21,000, to $73,500.

A chart Cognetti provided late Thursday shows proposed salary increases for 15 management-level positions would add about $202,011 in costs.

"I'm going to have a tough time, I'll be perfectly honest with you, when I look through this budget and I see $15,000 raises, $13,270 raises ... $21,000 raises," Councilman Bill King said. "That's a little tough to swallow when you're asking people for a tax increase."

King noted he understands the need to offer competitive wages for leadership positions and agreed those employees deserve raises, but balked at the size of the proposed increases. He called for more incremental raises.

Cognetti maintains the increases are necessary if Scranton is to compete for and retain talent, pointing out the sometimes vast disparity in pay for similar positions between Scranton and other cities and entities. For example, the Scranton School District's facilities manager position pays in excess of $55,000 more per year than the city's DPW director position, a salary comparison included in the budget shows.

"To me the framing isn't that these are giant raises for individuals," Cognetti said. "These are adjustments to getting these individuals, either the ones that work here already or ones that we're trying to recruit, up to a point where we're not going to lose them to other places."

Councilman Tom Schuster, who agreed with King's sentiment, also objected to the size of the proposed increases. He noted council scaled-back but approved pay hikes in the 2021 and 2022 spending plans. Council curtailed the vast majority of nonunion raises in this year's budget to 3%.

The proposed 2023 budget would also create a number of new positions — including a deputy police chief; parks and recreation manager; diversity, equity and inclusion coordinator and others — and update or reorganize several others posts. The total cost to the city would be almost $600,000.

During council's regular meeting Thursday, which followed the budget presentation, council Vice President Mark McAndrew said he cannot and will not support a budget with a 3% tax increase that pays for "huge" salary increases and new positions.

As he did earlier this week, council President Kyle Donahue called the budget proposal a starting point, not an end product.

"I have the utmost confidence that council will work through it and come to an equitable solution, whether it's on the raises front (or) the tax front," he said.

He noted his support for small, incremental tax increases to account for declining assessed property valuation, but said he's not committed one way or the other to a 3% hike at this point.

"But moving forward I think we are going to work through this line by line and see if we can come to ... agreement on what works for everybody," Donahue said.

Councilwoman Jessica Rothchild expressed a similar sentiment, noting members will continue to review the document and discuss what would be most fair for the city, employees and residents.

Council introduced the budget ordinance Thursday and will host a budget caucus Tuesday with the Department of Public Works and Police and Fire Departments beginning at 5:45 p.m.

Video of Thursday's caucus session, which included input from the city's Office of Economic and Community Development and Code Enforcement and Parks and Recreation departments, is available online via ECTV's YouTube channel.

Contact the writer: jhorvath@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9141; @jhorvathTT on Twitter.