Wilkes-Barre Mayor Brown’s 2023 budget in the works, run for 2nd term announced

WILKES-BARRE — What’s included in Mayor George Brown’s 2023 budget won’t be disclosed until next week, but he’s already announced he’ll run again.

Without disclosing specifics, Brown Tuesday said he will present his budget address on Oct. 14.

Brown would not say whether the budget will include a property tax increase or a portion of the $37.1 million in federal American Rescue Plan funds allocated to the city to help it recover financially from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re not at that point yet,” he said when asked if he will tap into the remaining ARP money for a third time to balance the budget.

The budget hasn’t yet been finalized, but it will be ready by Oct. 15, the deadline listed in the city Charter for the mayor to submit it to City Council that has until the end of the year to approve it.

In this year’s $54.3 million balanced general fund budget Brown plugged in $1.8 million in ARP money to make up revenue lost during the pandemic. He added $3.5 million to balance the $53.2 million budget in 2021.

Since he took office in 2020 property taxes have remained at 141.33 mills. A mill is a $1 tax for every $1,000 of a property’s assessed value. Wilkes-Barre uses its own assessment, the only municipality in Luzerne County to do so. The 75 other municipalities use the county assessments.

“I can’t tell you right now,” Brown said about a property tax increase in 2023.

Further complicating the budgeting process are contract negotiations with the four unions representing police, fire, Department of Public Works and City Hall workers.

Discussions have been held “almost on a daily basis” regarding the contracts, Brown said. As the Oct. 15 deadline approaches and the negotiations carry on, Brown said he’s included in the budget what his administration believes will be the amounts of the raises for the employees. “We can’t leave it negative,” he said.

The question of whether he would run for reelection next year came up during an interview for a podcast last week with The Times-Tribune in Scranton, Brown said.

“My intention is to run for one more term,” Brown, 71 and a Democrat, said.

The first two years of his four-year term coincided with the pandemic. Things have improved this year and Brown credited his administration for that. He looked forward to continuing the progress in 2023 and beyond. If reelected he would begin serving a second term in January 2024.