The City of Williamsport mid-year budget report is pending release soon, but later than expected.

Councilwoman Liz Miele, chair of the city finance committee, and the committee were expecting to review it earlier this week but were told it was delayed. Jamie Livermore, city finance director, said it would likely be ready in about two weeks.

“I would point out that we are slightly better than halfway through the year at this point,” Miele said.

She added how that moves the council and administration closer to the discussions on the 2026 budget season.

“That does put us closer to the sort of tipping point that we spent a lot of time discussing,” she said, referring to the budget discussions that lead to a .33 mill tax increase for this year and half-mill the year before. A mill is listed in the 2025 budget as $861,055.

Miele alluded to a challenging budget season due to the allocation of federal COVID-19 relief funds, which must be spent by 2026.

“We’ve been backfilling a substantial shortfall in the city’s budget with American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding, but this year that is officially over,” she said.

“So, we are going to have a relatively major budget shortfall, so I would encourage the other members of the finance committee, members of council and, of course, members of the administration to, I suppose, to just begin considering ways in which we could ideally find some funding that would help us or make cuts that would help us meet a balanced budget without too much fighting or without too much soap box sort of standing by members of council.”

City leaders are expecting a much clearer fiscal picture upon completion of an analysis being done by Public Financial Management Group Consulting LLC (PFM), a Philadelphia-based consulting firm.

The state Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) is picking up 90% of the cost of the PFM Group work as part of the second phase of a strategic financial management plan.