Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti converted a stretch of Euclid Avenue, the street where she lives, into a one-way route. Residents say the change has produced near collisions, blocked truck access, and left emergency vehicles going the wrong way.
City council members say her administration never gave the written notice required under local code. On Sept. 3, council unanimously rejected legislation that would have made the one-way permanent.
The fight now sits at the center of Cognetti’s bid for Congress. It raises basic questions about notice, traffic safety, and whether City Hall followed its own rules before reshaping a neighborhood street.
Les Spindler, a Scranton resident, brought the project to council on April 7, 2026. Meeting records show council members did not know about the work. The clerk was told to contact the mayor’s office.
Spindler returned with updates through the spring. He described neighbors watching cars drive the wrong way and a close call that shook a family on the block.
He told council a neighbor’s “daughter was almost hit head on,” and that another neighbor warned people are going the wrong way.
"Somebody's going to get killed there."
Spindler also raised emergency access. He said a fire truck would not fit and that he watched an ambulance leave the wrong direction during construction.
"There's no way a fire truck is going to fit up there.... I looked down to where they're doing the project and an ambulance went out the wrong way, an ambulance."
He tore into the design itself. “They didn't talk to anybody that it's going to affect. I mean, my five-year-old granddaughter could have designed that project better than whoever did it,” he said.
By May 26, Spindler’s frustration had turned electoral. He called the handling so “ridiculous” that voters should back Cognetti for Congress in November “so we get her out of here.”
Emiliani Trucking has operated in the area since 1936, about a mile from Cognetti’s home. Co-owner Jack Emiliani said the company long used Euclid Avenue to reach North Main Avenue, a busy commercial corridor.
The one-way change cut that path. Emiliani said crews can no longer bring trailers to the yard.
"This is a residential neighborhood, but we've been grandfathered in since 1936. And basically, now, we can't even pick our trailers up. We have to leave them up in Archbald, Pennsylvania. We can't bring them to our yard, I can't even bring them to my yard to work on them.... It comes right off of our profit for our trip."
No injuries, deaths, or arrests appear in the public record tied to the change. The harm described so far is near misses, wrong-way driving, and lost business access.
Scranton city code lets the administration test traffic changes for 90 days after written notice to council. If council does not approve permanent rules, the trial ends.
Council’s position is plain. Members say they never received written notice before one-way signs went up. They also say a grant application the mayor’s office later pointed to “did not include a one-way street.”
The mayor’s office argued council effectively approved the work by backing that grant and said the city had PennDOT support first. In a statement the office pointed to earlier, officials said they “obtained PennDOT approval prior to submission of the traffic changes to City Council, as we normally do. It would be irresponsible to present a plan that PennDOT would not support or allow us to legally implement.”
A Washington Free Beacon review of the dispute found the paper trail cut the other way on notice and origin.
On September 17, PennDOT wrote the mayor. The letter said “PennDOT representatives have stated that the change to one-way was presented by the City Engineer.”
It also described repeated failures to “send written communication to Council to notify of the proposed regulation and the reasons for the change,” language tied to city code duties the mayor’s office is supposed to meet.
That sequence matters. The mayor’s office had cast the one-way as a PennDOT safety suggestion. PennDOT’s letter framed the idea as coming from Scranton’s own City Engineer.
Council then faced a permanence vote. On Sept. 3, members unanimously rejected legislation to keep the one-way in place, a result covered by the Times-Tribune.
Cognetti’s office called the vote a “disheartening display of political rhetoric over public safety.”
Rejection on paper does not automatically restore two-way traffic. Councilman Patrick Flynn said construction changed the physical layout.
"Sidewalks were pushed out substantially, essentially making this a forced one-way. There's no possibility right now the way it's set up to be a two-way."
Authorities have not publicly detailed a funded rebuild plan to reverse that work. Investigators and residents are left with signs, narrowed pavement, and a street that no longer functions as it did before the trial.
Property records reviewed in the Free Beacon reporting show Cognetti and her husband bought the Euclid Avenue home for $349,000 in 2021. The one-way stretch sits near that property and can reduce through traffic past it.
Cognetti, a Democrat, is running for Congress against Republican incumbent Rob Bresnahan. Her campaign site says she “reformed the office” by “battling corruption in City Hall” and helped “lower costs” by “properly managing city assets” and “adding modern infrastructure.”
She did not respond to the Free Beacon’s request for comment on the street fight.
The Euclid dispute is not the only governance clash following her. Cognetti brokered a $1.9 million deal to buy the old Fidelity Bank headquarters in Scranton. Her uncle-in-law sits on the bank’s board, and all nine board members contributed to her campaign.
At a July 16 council meeting amid debate over that deal, resident Rik Little objected to the mayor’s absence. “We got a mayor who's not here,” he said. “The mayor should be here every week.”
Those threads share a theme voters can test without guesswork: process, notice, and whether city power is exercised in the open.
Officials have not publicly released a full day-by-day account of when one-way signs first went up or how the 90-day clock was calculated. No public results have been released that settle the full contents of the grant application beyond council’s statement that it lacked a one-way plan.
Investigators and the public still need a clear answer on the street’s present legal status after the Sept. 3 rejection, including whether signs remain and how traffic is being enforced. They also need a concrete plan, with costs and timelines, if sidewalks must be moved again to restore two-way flow.
Emergency-access claims remain serious and unresolved in the public file. Authorities have not confirmed a formal incident review beyond the resident accounts given to council.
For a mayor selling competence and clean process while asking for a promotion to Congress, those are not side issues. They are the record.
When City Hall changes the street under its own mayor’s window first and explains itself later, neighbors are right to ask who the rules actually bind.
