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Our Opinion: President-elect Donald Trump has opportunity to find common ground

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<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; Landlord Debbie McLain put the city on notice she was leaving if it didn&#8217;t start showing her the respect she deserved for maintaining her properties.</p><p>The 30-mill property tax increase in Mayor Tony George&#8217;s proposed $47.9 million balanced budget for next year pushed her to the edge, and she blasted the spending plan during a sparsely attended public hearing Wednesday night at City Hall.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m telling you all, I&#8217;m out of here. You can just squeeze so much before people say, &#8216;Bye bye.&#8217; So take that to the bank. I don&#8217;t know if it means anything to you,&#8221; McLain said.</p><p>The city was doing just fine by her. But she could not say the same for herself, criticizing the city for what she said was lax or no enforcement of building codes and inspections of rental properties.</p><p>When McLain brought up the quality of life ordinance she referred to council earlier this year, council Chairman Bill Barrett reminded her the meeting was about the budget that council has until the end of the year to act on.</p><p>&#8220;It has everything to do with keeping money in Wilkes-Barre that&#8217;s the bottom line because you&#8217;re going to lose it,&#8221; McLain replied.</p><p>Angel Jirau, who said he&#8217;s a Vietnam-era veteran, said the tax increase is going to hurt his efforts to work with landlords to provide housing to homeless veterans.</p><p>&#8220;This is going to push them over the brink,&#8221; Jirau said.</p><p>George made a rare public appearance before council and in front of the audience of approximately 20 people defended his proposed budget, saying he has to make up for &#8220;phantom numbers&#8221; that were included in this year budget left him by former Mayor Tom Leighton. The property tax hike would raise $2.35 million in revenues and boost the line item to $12.5 million next year. The tax on the average home priced at $80,000 would cost the owner approximately $18 a month.</p><p>City employees will receive a 3-percent raise that George explained was due to Leighton including the pay hike in the contract extension he gave to the police department through 2019. The city&#8217;s other three unions, all in contract negotiations, will demand parity, he said.</p><p>The mayor responded to a complaint raised by resident Phillip Holena about overtime being factored in to an employee&#8217;s pension paid by the city.</p><p>&#8220;We&#8217;re in arbitration now with the fire and police department trying to stop that. They filed a grievance saying we can&#8217;t,&#8221; George said. But the arbitrator&#8217;s decision is binding, meaning the city has to accept it, he said.</p><p>The matter of George&#8217;s salary and health insurance bothered resident Bob Kadluboski, who acknowledged he&#8217;s dismayed with the mayor since he took office in January.</p><p>The proposed budget lists the mayor&#8217;s salary at $84,460 and medical insurance at $26,146.</p><p>&#8220;I want you to tell the taxpayers why do we have to pay you that kind of health care. There&#8217;s nobody in this audience that can pay that kind of health care,&#8221; Kadluboski said. &#8220;You&#8217;re on a double pension and it comes down to hogism. It comes down to greed.&#8221;</p><p>Resident Sam Troy brought possible solutions to the problems he said he saw in the proposed budget. He called for sacrifices by city employees in terms of health care and pensions, increasing the mercantile tax on businesses, possibly implementing commuter and amusement taxes. He reminded George about an idea the mayor made for a community task force of citizens to scrutinize the budget to see where responsible cuts could be made.</p><p>Troy said the proposed property tax would do the opposite of the mayor&#8217;s goal of eliminating blight.</p><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see anyway out of that. More people are going to lose their homes. We&#8217;re going to have more abandoned properties. We&#8217;re going to have more dilapidated properties, and obviously the quality of life is going to suffer as a result, &#8221; Troy said.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tony George made a rare public appearance before city council Wednesday night and defended his proposed $47.9 million balanced budget at a public hearing at City Hall. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/web1_mayorgeorge.jpg</photo0><caption0>Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tony George made a rare public appearance before city council Wednesday night and defended his proposed $47.9 million balanced budget at a public hearing at City Hall. </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Jerry Lynott</p><p>jlynott@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Jerry Lynott at 570-991-6120 or on Twitter @TLJerryLynott</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Taxpayers blast Wilkes-Barre Mayor George’s budget and proposed property tax hike