Mundie: Mayor still wants to sell water authority [Standard-Speaker, Hazleton, Pa.]

Nov. 24--As administrators and council members prepare Hazleton's budget for 2012, one councilman predicts the budget for 2013 will show a deficit that Mayor Joseph Yannuzzi will exploit by renewing attempts to sell the city's water system.

Councilman Jack Mundie said pay raises that Yannuzzi is offering, price increases for health insurance and bookkeeping procedures in the 2012 budget will add to a deficit looming for the following year.

"They want to run up expenses in the city and then bankrupt the city and try to sell the water authority," said Mundie, the only council member to vote against the draft of the 2012 budget introduced Monday. Budget problems will mount after 2012 when Hazleton Creek Properties makes the last installment payment of $600,000 for purchasing land from the city, he said.

Yannuzzi said Mundie, a former board member of the Hazleton City Authority, is speculating.

"Nobody ever said water company sale," Yannuzzi said.

Yannuzzi and his top administrator Mary Ellen Lieb realize that the payments from Hazleton Creek will end next year for 277 acres that the company is reclaiming for an amphitheater and other businesses.

"We know we have to make adjustments. We'll work this out," said Yannuzzi, adding that he welcomes Mundie's suggestions for closing the gap in the 2013 budget.

Talk about selling the authority's water company dates at least to the 1970s but was revived last year when then-mayor Lou Barletta proposed a sale. Barletta wanted to use the proceeds to build a solar energy farm, but compromised by accepting a deal in which the authority will make cash contributions of an estimated $410,000 a year to the city for 15 years.

Despite the length of the agreement, Mundie said the deal can be superseded.

"If you get a third vote on the water authority, the authority won't fight (the sale) ... so that agreement, I don't think, protects anybody," he said.

Mundie also objected to how the budget lists payments from the authority and costs of police overtime and salaries for city workers partially paid by grants. He wants the budget to show actual rather than net figures.

"It should be done ... We're changing that," Yannuzzi said.

Yannuzzi, however, said net figures have been used in budgets for years, but Mundie, a long-time councilman, waited until now to criticize.

Pay raises offered to maintenance workers cost the city only $1,973, Yannuzzi said.

Thirteen police officers promoted on Friday will earn an extra $38,000 collectively through their pay raises.

"It's justifiable for the results you're going to get. I think with the efficiency of the police it will turn out that that will be a wash," Yannuzzi said.

Asked about the 24 percent increase in the cost of health insurance for city workers, Yannuzzi said premiums rise all the time.

"Why do you think we asked for an increase?" Yannuzzi said.

The draft of the budget raises the property tax rate to 3.23 mills from 2.83 mills, an increase of 14 percent.

While Mundie said Yannuzzi low-balled the increase as a 12 percent hike during Monday's council meeting, Yannuzzi said he thinks the 12 percent figure came from Mundie.

Lieb didn't compute the percentage increase, but remembers one council member, perhaps Mundie, estimating the percentage.

A tape of the meeting indicates that Lieb, Yannuzzi, Mundie and at least one other council member all used the figure of 12 percent that evening.

kjackson@standardspeaker.com

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