BAYONNE — At a special meeting on Nov. 2, the Bayonne City Council approved a $60 million transitional year budget for six months ending Dec. 31. It won’t raise taxes over the previous tax bill, but the previous tax bill had contained an increase over the prior bill.
Earlier this year, the city voted to change its yearly budget from fiscal year (July 1 to June 30) to a calendar year (Jan. 1 to Dec. 31) and this required the city to devise a six-month budget to cover the gap between the end of the last fiscal calendar on June 30, 2011, and the beginning of the calendar budget on Jan. 1, 2012.
Taxpayers on the average home assessed at $133,000 saw about a $150 increase in August, city officials said. The November bill is expected to be exactly the same as August. Also, the estimated bills that will go out in February and May are expected to be about $75 less for each bill than the November bill.
Business Administrator Steve Gallo that the administration is currently working to keep taxes from rising in the future and to reduce the annual budget gap that has plagued budgets for a greater part of the last decade.
“Eliminating the annual budget deficit is a challenge, but we are making progress,” he said.