SCRANTON — The city hopes to reach a compromise with parking-system bondholders to keep downtown street parking free on Saturdays, under a restructuring of debt that would avoid a default, Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti said Wednesday.
On Tuesday, city and parking officials explained the refinancing plan to city council in a caucus attended by several downtown residents, business owners and others opposed to expansion of street-metered hours paid via kiosks on weekdays and particularly on Saturdays, which currently has free parking downtown.
Traffic and parking along Biden St. in downtown Scranton on Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRPAHER)
Council President Gerald Smurl, Tom Schuster, Mark McAndrew and Jessica Rothchild urged the city officials and parking representatives to try to negotiate with bondholders a removal or reduction of Saturday hours.
Scranton City Council, on the dais at right, hold a caucus with officials representing the city and the outside operators of the downtown parking system, seated at table, on Tuesday, July 8, 2025. (JIM LOCKWOOD / STAFF PHOTO)
After the caucus, during council’s regular weekly meeting, members of the public expressed concerns that eliminating free parking on Saturdays would keep people away from downtown and hurt businesses and their employees, and also place extra costs and burdens on students of Lackawanna College and patrons of the Scranton Public Library.
“This is going to be detrimental to my business, my customers, my staff,” Jennifer Saunders, owner of Northern Light Espresso Bar and Cafe and Little Wild Refillery, told council. “We need to maintain the businesses that are here and this is going to be an extreme hardship.”
“I’m voicing my opposition as it relates to the proposed parking increases,” added William Nasser, co-owner of Backyard Ale House. “It will chase customers away and the losses aren’t just limited to customers. Our employees are going to have to get a commensurate raise” for increased parking costs.
Developer Charles Jefferson, who redeveloped numerous buildings downtown that have residences and businesses, also said of the proposed parking changes, “We all believe it’s egregious, overburdening and just plain wrong.”
A parking meter along Wyoming Ave. in downtown Scranton on Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRPAHER)
A parking sign in downtown Scranton on Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRPAHER)
A parking sign in downtown Scranton on Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRPAHER)
Jamie Hailstone, general counsel for Lackawanna College, located downtown, said of the proposed changes in parking hours and rates, “There’s no question this will hurt our students … it will just be an extra burden on a population that really doesn’t need to be burdened like this.”
Martina Soden, the head of reference services at Scranton Public Library, said the library has tailored many of its programs around current hours when street enforcement of hours ends and free parking on Saturdays. “Please reconsider how this will affect patrons, families and businesses in our community, with the changes in the parking hours,” Soden said.
Several others also expressed similar concerns and sentiments.
The issue then went before council in the form of several pieces of legislation that would implement the various facets of the debt restructuring plan.
While council passed most of the legislation, it deadlocked on an ordinance to amend the concession agreement from 2016 with an entity called Community Development Properties Scranton, an offshoot of the nonprofit Grow America organization that is the outside operator.
Council voted 2-2 — with McAndrew and Shuster voting no, and Smurl and Rothchild voting yes, and Bill King absent — on advancing on second reading an ordinance to amend a concession agreement regarding the city’s parking garages and street-metered spaces, according to an Electric City Television simulcast and recording of the meeting.
The tie vote meant that the ordinance failed, “which means we will be, in theory, putting the city in jeopardy of a default,” council Solicitor Tom Gilbride told council.
Enactment of an ordinance requires three separate affirmative votes that usually occur in three consecutive weekly meetings. The defeated ordinance could possibly be resurrected at a future meeting if either McAndrew or Schuster, who were the no voters, makes a motion for reconsideration, Gilbride said.
McAndrew first tried to table the ordinance, to see if bondholders would agree to remove Saturday metered hours from the plan. That vote to table the legislation also failed in a 2-2 tie, with Smurl and Rothchild voting against tabling and McAndrew and Schuster voting yes to table.
Noting the 2016 “monetization” of the parking system was an early step in the city’s financial recovery, Schuster said, “I feel the rate increase plus the extension of hours plus the addition of Saturdays goes against that revitalization. It defeats this purpose. I hope those concessions (with bondholders) can be made.”
Rothchild also spoke of various parking system changes and improvements she’d like to see, including a “hard stop” for street-metered payment at kiosks after enforcement hours, as well as better maintenance of kiosks and possible lower fines for prompt payment of parking tickets, to name a few.
McAndrew said, “At the end of the day, we can’t let this default, the agreement, so they have to come up with a better plan because if they default, it comes back to us.”
In 2012, the then-council allowed the Scranton Parking Authority, and by extension, the city, to default on parking bonds. The result was financial disaster that nearly tanked the city and eventually led to the 2016 monetization of the parking system. The problem facing the city now stems directly from the 2012 default, Smurl said.
“This isn’t something that started today. This started back in 2012 when a city council back then decided not to pay debt obligations of the parking authority and that destroyed our credit rating back then. I certainly don’t want to see that happen again,” Smurl said.
During the caucus, city and parking officials said they would ask bondholders about scrapping the Saturday hours, but it may not be doable because under the refinancing, the bondholders already would be taking a $15 million loss in the returns they initially expected to receive long term.
But Saturday hours for street parking clearly emerged as a sticking point for the city and downtown businesses, such that officials on Wednesday contacted bondholders and await an answer, the mayor said.
“This is a deal that has to be done in order to prevent a default on these bonds” which would have severe negative consequences for the city, Cognetti said in a phone interview. “We feel very strongly this needs to go through.”
While the city technically is not on the hook for the bonds of the outside operator, a default would nevertheless harm and stain the city. A default could result in a foreclosure or receivership that would have the city lose input or leverage over the operation of the parking system and hurt the downtown and city in any number of ways, such as 24-7 parking enforcement hours or soaring rates, city Solicitor Jessica Eskra said Wednesday in a phone interview.
“We really want to play an active role in preventing that scenario,” Eskra said.
Cognetti expressed confidence that a compromise could prevail.
“I think folks remember 2012 pretty well,” Cognetti said. “The reputational hit to the city, a city that is growing, is something that is a concern. We’ll hopefully come in Tuesday (to council) with a compromise on the Saturday piece and that will get us over the line.”
Meanwhile, the refinancing of debt connected to the parking system also calls for the city to contribute $2 million over the next 10 years to the system for maintenance and repairs of four garages, installation of solar panels atop some garages to generate revenue, and the dissolving of the redundant Scranton Parking Authority.
The 2016 monetization lease deal unloaded operation of street-metered spaces owned by the city and parking garages owned by the Scranton Parking Authority to an outside entity, the nonprofit National Development Council, which has since changed its name to Grow America. The 2016 deal also created a seven-member hybrid entity, the nonprofit Community Development Properties Scranton, containing four members of NDC and three city members — the mayor, the city council president and the city controller, or their designees — as the controlling entity underpinning the new arrangement, and which issued $38 million in bonds to pay the city upfront for the 45-year concession lease. That is the parking debt that now is getting refinancing and extended out to 2070.
David Trevisani of the nonprofit Grow America, which is the outside operator of Scranton’s downtown parking system, at right, discusses with media a debt refinancing plan, in a hallway in Scranton City Hall, on Tuesday, July 8, 2025. City financial consultant Scott Shearer of PFM, at left, and city Solicitor Jessica Eskra, look on. (JIM LOCKWOOD / STAFF PHOTO)