By Jerry Lynott jlynott@timesleader.com
WILKES-BARRE — A second scheduled confab of local mayors signaled the success of their first meeting Wednesday.
Mayor George Brown invited four other city leaders to City Hall for the inaugural bipartisan discussion of best practices. Pittston Mayor Michael Lombardo will host the next get-together.
“Every two months we’re going to meet at different locations. The next meeting in April is going to be at Mayor Lombardo’s office,” Brown said. “We’ll take turns. I was lucky today that it was at my home base.”
Mayors Paige Cognetti of Scranton, Kevin Coughlin of Nanticoke, Jeff Cusat of Hazleton, Lombardo and Brown met for about two hours and continued their talk over lunch.
“It went great. We were able to talk about common concerns,” said Cusat, the lone Republican in the group.
Cusat participated in a previous attempt to hold regularly scheduled meetings among mayors and looked forward to continuing discussions with his peers.
“We really want to get in depth next time,” Cusat said.
The idea for the mayor’s sitdown sprung from Brown’s meeting with Cognetti earlier this year. They thought it would be beneficial to include others in the discussion because of the common issues they share such as pension, finances, infrastructure and blighted properties.
“After our discussion we found we have similar situations with our cities. With that in mind, we thought, let’s get together with other mayors,” Brown said. “If people like Mayor Lombardo have had successes with the land banking and things he’s done downtown, we can benefit from that.”
Cusat shared an interest in land banking to return blighted properties to good use and said he would like to reintroduce it as mayor. As a councilman he proposed legislation to create a land bank in Hazleton.
The mayors can save time and money by taking cues from what’s worked in their neighboring cities, Cusat said
”We can probably learn from other mayorships,” Brown added. “We’ll have people come in to help us understand different things, and address blight and other issues in our communities.”
Reach Jerry Lynott at 570-991-6120 or on Twitter @TLJerryLynott.