One of North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco’s perennial promises to the township’s residents is to stabilize property taxes. In fact, it was the battle cry and campaign motto of the municipal election in May, when Sacco and his ticket steamrolled to re-election in the Board of Commissioners’ race.
A year ago, when the 2002 to 2003 municipal budget was introduced, Sacco and his officials were actually successful in lowering taxes by a slight margin.
However, with the economy in a state of flux and state and federal aid being reduced by the millions, keeping tax rates stable has become a major chore.
“We’re trying to keep the taxes as stable as possible,” Sacco said. “But the economy isn’t good and state aid isn’t coming to help us. We did our best under trying conditions.”
Last week, the Board of Commissioners officially introduced the 2003 to 2004 $61.9 million municipal budget, with spending up $1.4 million from last year, a 2.3 percent increase.
Because of the increases in expenditures, the township has decided to raise the municipal tax rate 18 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value, going from $15.96 per $1,000 last year to a rate of $16.14 this year. Which means that the average home at the assessed property value of $140,000 will be taxed an additional $25 this year.
However, school and county taxes also have risen. So when you add that the rate of school portion of the tax bill went up 49 cents per dollar, from $13.09 to $13.58 per $1,000 of assessed property value (an average increase of $68), and the county tax rate went up from $8.08 to $8.60 (an average increase of $75), North Bergen homeowners will be paying an average of $168 more in taxes in the coming year.
The average homeowner will receive a tax bill of $5,365 for the fiscal year.
Township Administrator Chris Pianese was quick to point out that the municipal portion of the tax bill only went up 1 percent.
“That’s the one we can control,” Pianese said. “While we were preparing the local budget, the county comes in with an increase that we were not expecting. We knew that the school portion was already going to go up. But this administration has been successful in keeping the tax rates way below the rate of inflation. We’ve been able to include and maintain all our previous services. I think it was a great job of keeping a stable tax rate.”
Pianese said that he went to the county’s business administrator, Abe Antun, to see if they could shave some of the tax bills. They did manage to cut $4 million from the proposed county budget.
Three reasons
Pianese said there are three main reasons why the municipal budget shows an increase of $1.4 million.
“Police salaries and expenses have gone up $400,000, from $8 million to $8.4 million,” Pianese said. “Over the last 12 months, we put on 20 new police officers to give us an excess of 120 officers in our department, the most we’ve had in many years.”
There was a hiring freeze within the police ranks because of a lawsuit filed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), but that suit has been settled, so the town has been able to hire more officers.
The increase in ambulance service, with the town hiring full-time EMTs, taking over the formerly volunteer squad, has also brought on an increase in expenses from $100,000 to $450,000, but the town plans to make even more in revenue from the insurance companies that cover the patients using the service.
“There’s an increase in the budget because we added one full-time crew and another during the busy hours,” Pianese said. “Plus, we had the purchase of a new ambulance. They have to be listed now, but we should be seeing the revenues from the insurances and that should be money on the plus side eventually.”
Pianese also said that there are increases in health care benefits for township employees from $7.2 to $7.5 million, and in solid waste collection from $3.6 to $3.9 million.
“In today’s economy, keeping the health benefit increases to just $300,000 is pretty good,” Pianese said.
To offset the increases, more than half of the town’s homeowners, approximately 6,000 of the 11,000 homes, will receive an increase in the tax credits they received as part of the state’s Regional Efficiency Aid Program (REAP), which North Bergen homeowners are entitled to because of its participation in the North Hudson Regional Fire & Rescue.
That program was initiated four years ago under former Gov. Christie Whitman as an incentive for municipalities to consolidate services to save money.
In the coming year, the REAP tax credit will be increased by $40, from $254 to $294, savings that will appear on the third and fourth quarter tax bills so that credit lessens the blow of the tax increase.
Still, having a tax increase bothers Sacco.
“We’ve been able to keep our tax rate percentages lower than the rate of inflation every year since 1994,” Sacco said. “We can live with this budget, but I’m not happy with it. I’d much rather have a budget that shows a tax decrease, like we had last year, but that didn’t happen. We didn’t expect the county tax increase and we’re trying to absorb all of it as best we can. The county budget came in as a surprise to all the mayors. Everything else is flatlined.”