The North Bergen Board of Commissioners unanimously voted last week to adopt the 2001-2002 fiscal budget, a $60.6 million budget that calls for $37.4 million to be raised by taxation. That represents a $700,000 increase in the tax portion that must come from homeowners.
According to the township’s Chief Financial Officer Chris Pianese, the increase means that the owner of an average home assessed at $140,000 will pay an additional $17 per year in real estate taxes.
"We’re really talking about a minimal increase," Pianese said. "The state allowed all municipalities to increase taxes by 3.5 percent. Ours went up less than one percent. We’re keeping in line with the strategy to keep stability in the tax rate. We never see a dramatic swing one way or the other."
The new budget calls for an overall tax rate of $16.48 per $1,000 of assessed value, where the old tax rate was $16.29 per $1,000 of assessed value. That includes an amount for the local schools and for county taxes.
The biggest reason for the tax increase lies within the significant increase in the cost of health benefits for township employees. Almost $1.4 million more will go to health benefits over the course of the coming fiscal year, some 25 percent more than a year ago.
"Because of that item, we’ve chipped away at other areas in order to cut down on spending," Pianese said.
Pianese also said that the township has been more aggressive in collecting taxes than in the past, which helped to keep the costs down.
"Our collection rate has gone up to almost 97 percent," Pianese said. "It’s almost a full percentage point over last year’s collection rate. That aggressive approach to collecting taxes has had a domino effect in other areas as well."
The outline of the budget that was presented to the council had a blanket statement attached to it.
"Every effort has been made to maximize efficiency and utilize outside funding sources to ensure minimal impact to the taxpayer," the statement read.
Further studies are being conducted to see whether more cuts can be made to the budget and what areas to address possible cuts.
Pianese said that with the tax credits that homeowners receive from the Regional Efficiency Application Program (REAP), given to North Bergen homeowners for participating in the North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue, the tax increase will be minimal.
"If the homeowner received the REAP credit, then they are paying less in municipal taxes than they did in 1994, about $10 less per year," Pianese said. "We’re at a lower rate and have lower taxes than a lot of other municipalities."
Pianese said that prospective developments, like Half Moon Harbour on River Road and the new Lowe’s Home Improvement Center complex on Tonnelle Avenue, were not figured into this budget. That means that increase of tax revenues from those developments will help to lower the tax levy portion of the budget in future years.
"We suffered a dramatic loss in ratables [properties contributing to taxes] over the last 10 years, but we’ve turned it around nicely in the last two years," Pianese said. "We’re going to see further pluses in ratables as well. I think it’s a real positive budget and it is glowing proof that we’ve stabilized taxes."