Wilkes-Barre Mayor George Brown and city officials celebrated the reopening of the Strauss Lane bridge in the cityâs Goose Island neighborhood on Monday. The bridge was closed in summer 2018 after an inspection determined there was significant undermining of the creek bed beneath the bridge abutments. City council awarded the $311,000 construction contract to Minichi Construction of Avoca on Oct. 22, 2020 and work began Nov. 18, 2020. A $250,000 Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Multimodal Grant will cover the bulk of the project cost. The remainder will be paid from the cityâs liquid fuels account, which received nearly $1.2 million in state funding last year for road and bridge projects.
Wilkes-Barre officials faced more than their share of challenges in 2020, but Mayor George Brown has no regrets about running for the office or the decisions heâs made over the past year.
Brown, 69, reflected last week on his first year as the cityâs chief executive and his plans and goals for the future of his hometown that he hopes he and his administration can accomplish during his first term in office.
After his Jan. 6 inauguration, Brown said, he spent his first month in office evaluating staffing and revising the spending plan of his predecessor, Tony George, whose 2020 budget Brown believes relied on overly optimistic revenue projections.