Trending
In December of 2025, Williamsport City Council approved a budget for 2026. Even with a tax increase on homeowners, that budget relied in part on the assumption that the condemned building at 245 W. Fourth St. would be sold.
Now, nearly 30 weeks later, the matter of even accepting bids for that sale has been tabled twice. In tabling a vote to accept bids, council did not address how to replace the revenue its own budget anticipated from that sale.
To be fair to council, no one else in the long saga of the City Hall building seems to be interested in discussing the figures that, in our view, should be driving these discussions.
When the building was condemned nearly five years ago, the city's administrative functions were relocated to other properties, owned directly or indirectly by the city, on a "temporary" basis.
To this date, neither Mayor Derek Slaughter or anyone in his administration has addressed what renovations or retrofitting of these properties would be required for the facilities to become permanent offices.
We particularly have concerns with what renovations are needed for a building designed as a museum to truly function, optimally, as a police station.
On the other side, we believe advocates for saving the building at 245 W. Fourth St. have also been reluctant to compare the potential costs of using other properties permanently against renovating a building some in our community speculate was cost-prohibitive when the federal government deeded it over to municipal government in the first place.
We believe we are open-minded. We believe we shouldn't have an opinion on which option makes the most sense until we -- and our city's elected leaders -- have seen best-case and worst-case scenarios for the cost of renovating the "temporary" offices, renovating City Hall at 245 W. Fourth St. or building new structures.
But we are frustrated -- and believe every taxpayer should be frustrated -- that this many years have passed without honest conversations about these cost estimates.