The Town Council introduced Tuesday a $32 million budget for the year 2000 that would hold the line on taxes, leaving no change in the tax rate for municipal portion. Local taxpayers can expect to pay $10.52 per $1,000 of assessed value on their homes as a result of the municipal portion, or about $2,343 on the average home. This does not include potential increases in the overall tax rate due to the school or county budgets. “This is a very solid budget,” said Town Administrator Anthony Iacono, who along with Chief Finance Officer Peggy Barkala has been credited with holding the line. “We have used no fiscal tricks or one-year revenues that we won’t have ever again. We cut spending and increased revenue and still used less of our surplus.” The town could actually see a decrease in the municipal portion of two or three cents if the proposed state tax reduction is authorized by the governor’s office, Iacono said. The introduction of the budget on March 14 and possible passage on April 11 makes this one of the earliest budgets in the last decade. The proposed budget would actually have to raise $25 million from local taxpayers, or about $16,000 less than was raised in 1999, and would use 45 percent of this year’s surplus (which is money received last year that was not spent), or about $2.1 million. Last year, the budget used 53 percent of that year’s surplus, and in the past decade the percentage has been as high as 57 percent. The public hearing is slated for April 11 at 7 p.m. in the council chambers “That’s the lowest percentage of its surplus the town has used in eight to 10 years,” Iacono said. Although costs have risen in several areas such as payments to the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission’s tax pool and increased debt service for the Secaucus Municipal Utilities Authority, several significant factors have gone into helping the municipality overcome the increases. Meetings with the various department heads, Iacono said, resulted in a slicing of $200,000 from their original requests. This budget reflects a move by the council last year to realign its inspection process for fire and police alarms. In this, Iacono said, the town gained $50,000 in one area and $30,000 in another, while the town expended $4,000 less in salaries for state inspectors. Iacono said in some departments, inspectors’ salaries might be increased to reflect the good performance. This would not hurt the budget because fees in these departments are required to be spent within that department or go to the state at the end of the year. The local inspectors took over inspections that had previously been done by the state. By doing this, the town did not have to pay the state inspectors and in addition got to keep fees. “This gave us a double bang for our buck,” Iacono said. Income from recreation fees rose by $30,000, due partly to expanded recreation programs. This was slightly offset by increase in salaries for recreation due to umpires and other officials put on the payroll for the first time. Federal grants for police hiring resulted in an increase of $375,000 that had not been anticipated. The town was also able to collect $125,000 from one delinquent taxpayer. This allowed the town to reduce its reserve for uncollected back taxes, another double benefit. While the town’s payment to the HMDC tax pool actually went up by $265,000, a recent change of state law limiting yearly increases to 5 percent allowed the town to pay only $108,000 this year. Payments on the $40 million SMUA debt, however, went up by $300,000. Mayor Dennis Elwell said the members of the council will meet with SMUA officials in the future to see if the debt may need refinancing in order to reduce the yearly impact. The town also managed to reduce spending in legal services by $95,000 and in tax appeal litigation by $25,000. Costs for the Board of Health fell by about $13,000 although salaries for the Social Services Department rose by nearly the same. This budget was also reduced by $50,000 because of fees associated with the 100th year anniversary in last year’s budget that are no longer necessary. “Over all, we saved in salaries, and increased productivity,” said Mayor Elwell, who had asked the finance department to project possible tax rates for the next five years as part of a five-year plan that will allow the council to better schedule purchases and make other decisions. “This won’t tell us everything that will happen in the future, but it will give us something that will allow us to decide how and when to make significant purchases for the town, and create a stable economic situation.”
Our Digital Archive from 2000 – 2016
