Despite Concerns, Town Approves 3% Tax Hike

Despite two dissenting votes, and residents’ pleas to reconsider, the township council approved a municipal budget Monday with a 3.03 percent tax increase.

“The economy is not improving,” said resident Jeff Foose. “In Bridgewater, the median sales price [of homes sold] is $312,500. That’s a decrease of 22 percent from the year prior.”

“Asking for 3 percent, and distilling it down to being just $46, it’s not $46,” he added. “It’s time after time, and year after year where we don’t make difficult decisions.”

Foose said he understands these are difficult times, but that just being able to say the budget is not increasing by 4 percent is not enough.

“I know we want to maintain a strong standard of living,” he said. “With 3 percent, ask yourself, is that really what we want going forward?”

When the budget was originally handed over to the township council in March, the tax increase was set at 6.5 percent—.

At the April 19 meeting, the council decided in a , and set about trying to find pieces to cut from the budget to ensure that levy could be set.

But after going through an initial set of cuts, the council was able to see the tax rate increase lowered to , which is equivalent to about a $30 increase on taxes.

With the amendments made to the budget, as approved by the council, the amount to be raised by taxes drops from the originally proposed $21,580,373.41, to $20,912,497.41, a 3 percent decrease.

Changes in appropriations to different parts of the budget include cuts in overtime work and salaries for snow removal, the office of emergency management and the police department. The cuts in the budget also include a lowered cost for a township assessment because the bid from the outside company came in lower than expected.

The most significant cut is of about $144,000 to the police department as the council has voted to alter a township ordinance that allows for three more police officers than are currently employed by the township. According to the original ordinance, the township was required to fund those additional three police officers in case the department deemed them necessary.

The change, as approved by the council, eliminates the funding for those three positions.

“The purpose of changing this ordinance is one of the results of the budget process,” said council president Allen Kurdyla. “It changes the number of police officers in the township, and eliminates three positions by ordinance.”

The ordinance was voted on, and passed, although councilman Matthew Moench and councilwoman Christine Henderson Rose voted against it.

Still, residents said they would rather see the council work harder to move toward a 0 percent increase.

“I do appreciate the hard work the council does,” said Shannon Road resident Bill Metz. “But I know in my development in Bradley Gardens that there are a lot of people who live on a fixed income. That little bit of money increase in a month is possibly the difference between being able to fill a prescription or having to forego it that month.”

But, Metz said, property values have gone down, and the council needs to consider that.

“The 1.9 percent sounds fair,” he said. “I am almost begging that you reconsider.”

Metz said he would like to see the council look at other options, such as using the municipal complex as a community center.

“I would like to make a recommendation that maybe we look at other sources of revenue,” he said.

The council voted 3-2 on the first amendment to the budget, which changed the tax increase to 3.03 percent, and voted 3-2 on the approval of the budget as a whole.

“I appreciate the work the administration has done to identify more cuts, but I don’t think these amendments go far enough,” said Moench, who voted against the amendment and, subsequently, the budget itself. “I am not quite comfortable getting to 0 percent, but I am more than comfortable with 1.9 percent.”

Councilman Filipe Pedroso, who also voted against the amendment and budget, said he believes the administration should have been challenged to get to the 0 percent increase.

“I’ve been a strong advocate of the 0 percent tax increase,” he said. “Upon diving deep into the budget, there are carryover expenses, and I felt that 1.9 percent was a reasonable compromise. I felt that items identified in the budget sub committee and those that were then proposed by the administration even convinced me more that 1.9 percent was a more than reasonable number, and I feel this council should stick to that original number.”

But for other council members, who emphasized the fact that there are carryover expenses from Hurricane Irene and the October snowstorm, as well as litigation—which serve as exceptions to the state-mandated 2 percent cap—they believe 3 percent is necessary to maintain services.

“I feel strongly that there are a number of services, and the 1.9 percent costs some services that are important to this community,” Rose said. “I’m a one-income household, and I get that it’s not easy.”

“But the quality of life in Bridgewater would take a significant nosedive at the original number proposed,” she added. “I think the 3.03 is a compromise.”

Kurdyla said the decision is all based on consideration of services.

“We’re all taxpayers also, and the value of my house has gone down too,” he said. “And I have been out of work for seven months. Any discussion we have is not a rubber stamp on what we’re going to spend, it’s based on looking at the services we provide in Bridgewater and evaluating if that service is necessary."

As a second budget amendment, the council voted unanimously to simply change the wording of an ordinance dealing with capital funds for sewer projects. Initially in the budget, it was listed as a bond ordinance, but the council opted unanimously to change that to a capital ordinance because the funds are already available in the sewer budget.

“This is not a change to the sewer taxes or rates, this has to do with capital projects that are sewer related,” Moench said. “We have the money already collected, and there was a financial accounting issue about how it was phrased.”

“This has no impact on taxes at all,” he added.

Still, with the votes split, and Moench and Pedroso voting against the budget as a whole because of the tax increase, many still believe a 0 percent increase would have been more appropriate.

“Thank you for the two votes against it,” Foose said. “This is disgusting what we just witnessed. We cannot go year after year raising taxes.”

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