Courtesy of Mish.
City officials in Scranton Pennsylvania have ignored pleas from residents pleading for bankruptcy.
Instead, the city raised property taxes and trash fees nearly 60% and tripled rental registration fees. The city’s school district, which faced a $4-million deficit, raised taxes 2.4%. The City Council, which in 2012 passed a 5% amusement tax on live entertainment, is now discussing a 10% drink tax.
As a result, taxpayer who can are fleeing the city.
The LA Times reports For Scranton residents, bankruptcy is an inviting option
When Detroit filed for bankruptcy, hundreds of residents took to the streets to protest what they saw as a drastic approach to fixing the city’s budget problems.
But in this hilly town of 76,000 in northeastern Pennsylvania, residents have a different view of Chapter 9: They want the city to declare bankruptcy. And soon.
“The silent majority would like to see bankruptcy,” said Bob “Ozzie” Quinn, president of the Scranton and Lackawanna County Taxpayers Assn. “Basically, it’s down to a point where people cannot afford to pay the taxes and are moving out of town.”
The City Council, which in 2012 passed a 5% amusement tax on live entertainment, is now discussing a 10% drink tax. The city’s parking authority is in receivership, and it recently privatized its parking meters: The company in charge upped rates and extended meter hours to 6 p.m., which bar owner Mert Gavin says has motivated workers to skip happy hour and head home to the suburbs straight after work.
“I am one of the last two bars that’s still downtown. Tink’s is gone. Whistle’s is gone, Banshee’s is gone, Molly Brannigan’s is gone,” said Gavin, who runs Mert’s. “Do they expect I’m going to bail the city of Scranton out myself?”
The taxes are especially egregious to some because so many of the city’s residents are elderly and living on fixed incomes. The median household income in Scranton is $37,000, and nearly one-fifth of residents live below the poverty line.
The city’s financial problems were accelerated by a 2011 Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that found that the city owed its police and firefighters unions back pay — about $21 million. The settlement money became due in 2013, but the city bickered over how to come up with the funds for so long that Moody’s warned in November that Scranton faced the threat of default.
“It’s been nonstop. They raised the water fees, the electric, the gas,” said Richard Laytos, a Scranton native who moved back to the city to retire in 1997 after 44 years in New Jersey….
