Wilkes-Barre’s negative balance for 2021 likely to change

WILKES-BARRE — The negative balance the city recorded last year likely will change, but a more than half-million dollar deficit is in the books for 2020.

The city came up $135,559 short when $52.9 million in expenses are compared to $52.8 million in revenues, according to the draft 2021 year-end financial report provided by the city. The city was operating with a balanced $53.2 million budget.

But as the city posts additional revenues and expenses budgeted for last year this year, the final tally will be different from the one contained in the draft report.

However, the same can’t be said for 2020, the first year the city felt the financial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Wilkes-Barre posted a deficit of $521,814, the report said.

“We were hit with the pandemic early in the year, so a deficit was expected. It would have been greater if we hadn’t done some other things to reduce it,” Wilkes-Barre Finance Officer Brett Kittrick said in an email.

The city refinanced approximately $24 million in bonds at a lower interest for a saving of more than $800,000, Kittrick noted.

Unlike 2020, last year the city booked as revenue $3.5 million from the $37.1 million in American Rescue Plan funds it received from the $1.9 trillion federal pandemic relief package signed into law last year. The Treasury Department allowed the city to use the ARP money to make up for lost revenue and other approved spending. The funds cannot be put toward reducing taxes or shoring up underfunded pension plans.

With the exception of taxes, most of the revenue categories missed their budgeted targets.

The city collected $11.5 million in property taxes, approximately 101% of the $11.4 budgeted. Likewise, earned income tax collections reached $14.6 million or 104% of the $14 million budgeted. The mercantile business tax nearly doubled the budgeted amount of $675,000, coming in at $1.3 million.

On the other hand, the city collected $975,098 of the $3.1 million budgeted for building permits, slightly better than 31%. The sale of city-owned property brought in $27,598 or just under 6.5% of the $426,000 budgeted.

For the most part, expenses came in under budget. Highways, Streets and Sanitation totaled $7.5 million, approximately 118% of the $6.3 million budgeted. The city assigned $60,000 for street paving, but spent $907,650 or 1,513 % of the budgeted amount.

With the pandemic ongoing, the city continued to itemize unbudgeted COVID-19-related expenses.

“Although the costs appear in the general fund, those expenses were funded through the American Rescue Plan via the revenue replacement provision within the Treasury guidelines,” Kittrick said.

The report listed a transfer of $96,525 in unbudgeted revenue from the Office of Community Development for COVID-19 costs. The expenses tallied just under $299,227.

Among the itemized expenses were:

• $95,198 Communicable Disease Control salaries.

• $41,977, Public Health administration salaries.

• $29,526 Building & Plant expenditures.

• $26,204 Police administration expenditures.

• $21,844 Public Health expenditures.