Township Committee Accepts $28 million 2011 Budget

The Township Committee approved at $28 million municipal budget Tuesday night that included 61 line-item freezes and reductions from 15 other items.

Many of the freezes come from areas frozen last year or a continuation of wage freezes and reductions from2010.

The budget, which comes in at $28,142,822, is a .65 percent increase over last year’s $27,962,137 budget.  It’s also the first time the township has had a 2 percent tax levy cap, as mandated by the state.

“Creating a budget that minimizes the impact on tax payers while providing township departments with the funds necessary to deliver the expected and needed services for our residents has been quite a challenge,” Mayor Gloria McCauley said. “By continuing to hold those line items to the same or lower levels as prior years, the savings carried over into future years.”

“Clearly, as we move forward, budgets will not become any easier with the 2 percent cap,” Committeman Frank DelCore said. “We’re going to continue to be stressed by trying to meet that cap. . .Unfortunately, we had to take a difficult but necessary step earlier today to ensure we were in compliance with the budget. I think this is a responsible, fiscally sound budget. I’m confident it will be adequate this year.”

Of the total budget, $11,310,850 is raised through non-tax revenue and $16,831,972 will be raised through local taxes.  The total municipal tax increase is $330,037, and a typical home assessed at $359,000 would see an increase of $21.18 on the municipal tax portion of this year’s tax bill.

“The budget is a reflection of the township’s ongoing commitment of doing more with less,” McCauley said.  “Township employees are asked to provide the same level of service to taxpayers despite the reduction in line item spending. A major component of the township’s fiscal philosophy is to minimize tax impact by keeping any tax increase at or below the state cap.”

“The first policy decision we made was to have a hard 2 percent cap,” Finance Committee Liaison Carl Suraci said. “We weren’t going to take any exceptions. . .Most importantly, we’ve delivered within the cap for the taxpayers

While the township saw a $700,000 increase in costs, mostly from pension and benefit payments, some sources of revenue remained at 2010 levels, rather than dropping.

“State aid energy tax receipts, even though they were flat this year, we received the same funding as last year,” Suraci said. “We’re still down 1.4 million less than our 2007 levels.  It has an accumulated effect over the last four years of $3.6 million.”

Public safety spending, at $7.377 million, encompasses the largest portion of budget funds, while insurance and pensions total $6.257 million. Public safety spending is about 26.5 percent of the budget, insurance and pension payments are about 22.5 percent and engineering and public works are about 15.3 percent of the budget.

Agreements with the township employees last year had many working a 37-hour workweek, which amounted to a 6 percent pay decrease and a savings of around $150,000. Meanwhile, department heads, non-union personnel, dispatchers and public workers agreed to no salary increases last year and also agreed to contribute 1.5 percent of their salaries to healthcare costs, for a savings of about $54,000.

The committee accepted the budget unanimously.

Editor's Note: This article has been corrected to reflect that the town's funding is down from 2007 levels, not 2000 levels as was originally stated.