Next round of 2026 Luzerne County budget presentations to be held Monday

Four proposed 2026 budget presentations are scheduled at the end of Monday’s Luzerne County Council work session — the District Attorney’s Office, Controller’s Office, Judicial Services and Records Division, and Operational Services Division.

Judicial Services and Records covers the deeds, wills, sheriff, coroner and civil/criminal court records departments in addition to the county records storage facility in Hanover Township.

The departments that fall under Operational Services are engineering, roads and bridges, planning and zoning, 911, emergency management, buildings and grounds, the boiler plant, and solid waste management.

The proposed county budget includes a 1.9% real estate tax that amounts to approximately $12 more per year on a median assessment of $95,500. That percentage may decrease with budget amendments. Council’s last budget work session deliberations yielded a net $421,130 in proposed reductions, according to a Budget/Finance Division report.

Council scheduled its first meeting of the month on Monday instead of Tuesday due to Veterans Day.

The work session follows a 6 p.m. voting meeting.

Voting

As previously reported, the council is set to vote Monday on County Manager Romilda Crocamo’s nomination of Michele Sparich as the new Operational Services division head.

Also on the agenda for final adoption is an ordinance that would impose a $100 fee on properties purchased in county delinquent tax auctions and mortgage foreclosure auctions to generate revenue for a new county demolition and rehabilitation fund.

Fee revenue would be deposited in a segregated interest-earning bank account. County Council could use the funds for county demolition and rehabilitation projects, and may award funds to municipalities, school districts, redevelopment authorities, land banks, and other nonprofit entities to demolish or rehabilitate blighted properties, the agenda said.

Property sales

Monday’s voting agenda also includes proposed procedures to sell two county-owned properties.

The first property is a three-story brick structure at 54 W. Union St. in Wilkes-Barre that previously housed community development. It is appraised at $373,000.

Council will vote Monday on whether to publicly seek proposals from commercial real estate brokers to market and sell the property.

Several council members have said a broker listing would reach more potential buyers.

For the other property — the Broad Street Business Exchange at 100 W. Broad St. in Hazleton — council is set to vote on a plan to go straight to “putting the property out for bid/auction,” the agenda said. This approach was advocated by several council members and the administration to save the expense of a broker commission because buyers are already interested.

Appraised at $2.1 million, the 44,480-square-foot Hazleton property has been under county ownership since 2009 to preserve the county’s claim on funds that had been loaned to the prior nonprofit owner.

Work session

Council is set to discuss the latest batch of proposed tax-delinquent repository property sales, which are periodically presented to council for approval.

Properties land in the repository if they do not sell in the initial upset tax auction or subsequent free-and-clear auction.

Sales are encouraged because the county has amassed approximately 1,000 repository properties that are in limbo, with no active owners to maintain and pay taxes on them. While some are sold each year, new ones are added after each sale.

Information on repository properties is posted under county tax-claim operator Elite Revenue Solutions’ site at luzernecountytaxclaim.com.