The Secaucus Town Council has announced three cost-saving measures designed to trim spending in the last quarter of the fiscal year.
Two annual parties Secaucus has sponsored in the past will be dramatically scaled back to save money.
The Columbus Day luncheon scheduled for Oct. 10 has been canceled. The town will still hold its usual Columbus Day celebration at 11 a.m. at the Christopher Columbus monument in the Plaza, but the usual luncheon at La Reggia will be noticeably absent. About 75 to 100 UNICO members and senior residents are the ones who usually attend the luncheon.
“It’s something we’ve always done, and we hope to be able to do again in the future,” said Mayor Richard Steffens. “But as we all know, this is a lean year and it was important to save whatever money we could before the end of the year.”
The town’s fiscal year begins Jan. 1 and ends Dec. 31.
Also cancelled is a lavish annual dinner at La Reggia for the town’s municipal volunteers, to thank them for their service. This year volunteers will be invited “to maybe have a sandwich” at Town Hall with council members instead, Steffens said.
New budget cuts will save an estimated $10,000.
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Also, council members and department heads planning to attend the upcoming New Jersey League of Municipalities convention in Atlantic City must pay their own hotel and food expenses. The town will pick up the $45 registration fee.
Registration and hotel fees will be covered only for Town Administrator David Drumeler and Chief Financial Officer Margaret Barkala.
Mayor Steffens will likely attend the convention, but will probably pay his own hotel expenses, Drumeler said.
In previous years, Secaucus spent as much as $6,200 for 10 to 12 people to attend this annual event. Hotel rooms were the biggest expense.
The convention, which will be held in November this year, offers professional development workshops and panels for senior municipal employees. But it also gained a reputation for the many parties held over the four-day event, and some council members have questioned whether sending people to the convention was the best use of municipal resources.
Town takes over Xchange streets
Also at the meeting, the council passed an ordinance requiring the town to take over maintenance of the streets near Xchange at Secaucus Junction, the new development on the south end of town. The ordinance simply codifies a legal agreement the town made with the developer after the first phase of the housing complex was completed.
By taking over street maintenance, the town agrees to pay for snow removal, trash collection, and lighting at Xchange. Eventually, Secaucus will also be responsible for street repair work at the complex, but since the streets near the development are new, such work likely won’t be necessary for many years.
“You’re looking at very low maintenance costs for the first 10 years,” said Town Attorney Frank Leanza.
Discussing the ordinance revived some council members’ complaints about how development fees from Xchange have been used.
Fraternity Meadows, the developer of Xchange, has agreed to pay Secaucus a $5 million “impact fee” for the development. Thus far, $1 million of this fee has actually been paid.
Typically, a developer will pay an impact fee to a town to offset the anticipated increased demand on municipal services. But last year, the Democratic majority on the council voted to use impact money from Xchange to help build the Secaucus Recreation Center, which opened in December. The Independent members of the council have said that this was a bad decision and have argued that the impact fee should be used to expand municipal services that will be needed by the new development, such as emergency response, school expansion, trash collection, snow removal, and similar services.
The argument was revisited Tuesday by Councilman Michael Gonnelli, who is running for mayor.
“You’re looking at needing additional manpower [to maintain the streets], additional man hours, there’s increased wear on municipal vehicles,” he said. “All this should have been paid out of the impact fee.”
He also noted that the large-scale development will attract families with children who will eventually need classroom space in the local schools, which are already at or near capacity levels.
However, council members John Shinnick, Gary Jeffas, and Dawn McAdam noted that since the town had already signed a legally binding agreement with Fraternity Meadows to take over the streets, Secaucus could be sued if it didn’t stick to the agreement.
“We run the risk of incurring additional legal fees,” Shinnick said. “And we’d almost certainly lose in court. So we’d just end up having to maintain the streets anyway.”
Last year, Secaucus received $261,239 in property taxes from Xchange and will receive $452,736 this year. Next year, when the next phase of the development is expected to be completed, Secaucus should get $778,846 in property taxes from Xchange. Ratables from the project this year are 35.14 million and next year are expected to jump to $60.2 million.
Finance subcommittee members announced
When the 2009 municipal budget was passed on Sept. 16, Mayor Steffens said he would form a new Finance Subcommittee to get the 2010 budget planning process underway next month, so next year’s budget will be passed earlier in the year.
On Tuesday he announced that Councilman John Shinnick, Councilman John Bueckner, Drumeler, and Barkala will serve with him on this subcommittee. One of the first tasks for the subcommittee, Steffens said, will be to find new ways to boost Recreation Center membership.
There are 2,733 current members, and the facility has an annualized revenue of $462,935, according to Drumeler. He added that annual operating expenses are $731,218. The debt service on the project is $375.496.50.
The subcommittee will examine possibly opening membership to the employees of companies based in Secaucus. Currently, only Secaucus residents may join the Recreation Center.
Videotaped meetings gets dry run, sort of
Tuesday’s Town Council meeting was the first to be videotaped, which open government advocates hope will put Secaucus one step closer to having televised meetings.
“This test will give us some idea of what we’ll need, in terms of technology, to get televised meetings underway,” Jeffas explained at the Sept. 8 council meeting. Last week’s test taping will also give the council a sense of whether it’s possible to record meetings in-house, rather than contracting the service out.
The video shot on Tuesday will not be aired, but will be viewed by council members to help them evaluate bids from professional video technicians interested in taping council meetings in Secaucus.
Advocates of taped meetings have long argued that televised meetings are important to keeping residents informed of what’s going on in their local government. Televised meetings, they argue, are particularly valuable to the elderly and people with young children, two groups who may not be able to attend council meetings on a regular basis.
If televised meetings ever become a reality council sessions will be broadcast on Channel 32.
E-mail E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.