The Williamsport City Council will vote Thursday on a final 2025 budget that would raise property taxes by 2 percent next year.
The council will meet at 7 p.m. in its chambers at Trade and Transit Centre II.
The council voted 6-0 to approve the budget on first reading Thursday. The council split 4-2 in favor of the tax hike. Council President Adam Yoder, who said he doesn’t support the hike, voted yes to move the budget along. So did council members Liz Miele, Randy Allison and Vincent Pulizzi.
Council members Bonnie Katz and Eric Beiter voted no. Councilman Jon Mackey was absent.
The 0.33-mill hike would raise the city property tax for the second year in a row. The tax would rise to 17.05 mills, up from 16.72 mills. This year, the city raised the tax 0.5 mills.
At the new tax rate, residents owning a $100,000 home would pay $1,705 in taxes, or $33 more a year and $2.75 more a month.
Mayor Derek Slaughter attributed the tax hike to rising medical, salary and other costs and the loss of federal American Rescue Plan Act money, which paid some day-to-day expenses this year. The 2024 budget contained $1.4 million in ARPA cash, which won't recur next year. The budget also contains almost $1.1 million more for the police and fire departments. The budget contains no new positions.
At a Nov. 18 council budget meeting, Slaughter said the proposed tax increase could bring about $290,000 in additional revenue.
“Overall, the 2025 budget includes an estimated 4% decrease in anticipated revenue. This decrease reflects the removal of the one-time transfers previously noted, but includes a $1.3 million transfer from the emergency reserve fund,” he said.
Slaughter said the city budget this year will have a $133,000 surplus and that will leave the year-end general fund balance at about $4.5 million. This year started with $3.8 million, according to the 2024 budget. By the end of next year, the budget projects, the balance will drop to less than $1.2 million.
Yoder said he will not support a tax hike.
“I'll be the first to admit, my individual philosophy is I like to see taxes as low as possible, right? I've voted against tax increases before. I don't like them, but I can't sit here and deny that there is not necessarily a need to increase taxes,” Yoder said. “There's certainly an argument for what's the fiscal responsibility to and kind of what we're looking at to do it. I don't like it and I certainly understand any argument for not supporting a tax increase.”
At a Dec. 5 council meeting, Katz expressed budget concerns.
“What scares me with what's going on with the budget is realizing we're not bringing enough tax revenue into the city to pay our bills, and a lot of what we're going after is grants and funding in that area to compensate for that loss,” Katz said. “If we did not have the ARPA funds, we would be so far behind and everything.”
But Katz pointed out employees are making “big-city salaries” for a third class city. She recommended re-evaluating salaries.
“We're all constantly being told that you have to pay a good salary to get good people. Well, I don't know how we're going to maintain these salaries down the line in the next few years because our population is decreasing, and we can't go after our tax paying citizens,” she said. “It’s getting more and more difficult and I know for a fact there were two people that moved out of the city already because of the tax rates that are going up.”
Katz mentioned several positions with salaries higher than she believes the city can afford. The city spends $500 a council meeting for outsourced information technology help.
“Our IT person (Kris Black) does not want to do the council meetings anymore, so it costs us $500 a month now to pay for somebody to come in and do our council meetings. That adds up,” she said.
Donna Fuller, who makes $69,010 as the city’s recently hired human resources, might receive a cost of living raise. Katz disagreed with that.
“I think she's on the ball, but … she's been here less than a month and she's going to get a cost of living raise. I mean, that doesn't make sense,” she said.
August “Skip” Memi started as the city’s economic and community development in 2020 with about a $61,000 salary. He was hired to run the redevelopment authority for more than $100,000 this year, Katz said.
Katz, who didn’t name Memi, said his salary was paid for with ARPA money.
“How could that possibly be? That just doesn't make sense. And it was used for market money, and that ARPA money could have gone through so many other things probably because we've been so careful of where we were going with this money,” she said. “It was beneficial to every department and the three departments - the police, fire and codes.”
Katz felt other salaries were too low. She named city codes clerk Robin Adams, who makes $42,093 annually after 13 years.
“They've been there longer than some of the new people that are making more money than them, and they're doing more work, which doesn't make sense,” Katz said. “I think if we intelligently look at this down the line, there's going to be layoffs. We're not going to be able to afford salaries, so therefore the layoffs are going to be police, fire, codes. These are the things that keep our city safe and our citizens safe.”
Yoder disagreed. He said the city is unique compared to surrounding municipalities.
“There's a cost to them (salaries) but it's it's always a balancing act about how can we keep our city nice, keep it safe, provide these services that we need to do and want to do in a manner that's manageable with the the economic demographic that we have in the city,” he said. “What we think we're going to see in the next couple years is that we've got to look at some systemic components, to get more in line with our economic demographic realistically.”
The city upgraded its financial software this year. Slaughter said the city now has more accurate reports but will face financial challenges. He said his administration will develop an action plan to combat the challenges.
“To the mayor's credit, and to everybody in the administration's credit, it seems like he has a phenomenal team around him at this point and everybody is here to do the work,” Beiter said.
Yoder agreed with the need for an action plan.
“I think there's a sense of urgency. They share the concern, right? I think a number of us have kind of had a little bit of that concern, anticipating that this could happen. Now it's here, right?” he said.
Miele recommended finding budget cuts for each department. She said that would put the city in a better position come 2026.
“There are a handful of things I would like to do that we either need to work into this budget or that I think that we should work into this budget in the best interest of the city over the next couple of years,” Miele said.
Allison said the amount of tax-exempt properties has affected revenues. About 33% of Williamsport’s properties are tax-exempt, according to 2024 city tax records.
Williamsport is a third-class city under state law and Allison called third-class cities a “stepchild” because they aren’t big enough for bigger city perks.
“That is not sustainable for a city our size. I think we're a unique area in that we're in a very rural area except for the city and it's all congregated in one place,” Allison said. “We face a lot of lack of revenue that otherwise could be helping us out of these situations. I think we need to put that on the front burner, we need to address it at the state level and have serious conversations with our state representatives.”
Slaughter was elected president of the Pennsylvania Municipal League in October, and Yoder brought that up.
“That is an amazing opportunity for us as a city, and you as mayor, to really spearhead that because multiple third-class cities are members of that,” Yoder said. “I think we're in a position where we can hopefully do something about that, at least start that process while you're in that seat.”
Slaughter said he’s already begun doing that.
