HOLMDEL — After two more hours of debate, the Township Committee has decided to amend the 2002 municipal budget yet again.
In a 4-1 vote at the May 10 meeting, the committee decided to use $187,000 in swim club surplus to lower the tax rate another penny to 5.5 cents per $100 of assessed valuation.
If the $14,498,665 budget is adopted as amended following a public hearing on June 10, the municipal tax rate will be 35.8 cents per $100 of assessed valuation.
Committeeman Larry Fink cast the dissenting vote.
After the meeting, Fink said that he voted no because it was just about shuffling more money. "It was just a Band-Aid approach. It did not address management issues which I have been lobbying for."
At previous budget meetings, Fink asked the committee to take a closer look at employee salaries and to re-examine the town hall operations. "The large budget is a symptom of rapid growth in the township," he said.
Fink said that when he asked to look at additional budget items, he did not expect the committee to go through the budget line by line, but that is what happened.
At the meeting, different committee members discussed ways that they thought the budget could be reduced in the future, including cutting out so many of the professionals that the committee has been relying upon over the last few years.
As an example, the township has three different planners. When the RO-3 zone on Route 35 was changed a few months ago, two planners were working on the project simultaneously, and both came up with the same recommendations.
Dronne made a motion to introduce the 6.5-cent amendment, and Davey seconded the motion. In discussion, Committeeman Terence Wall offered the idea to use swim funds to reduce the tax rate. He said recreation is used by everyone, and to redirect those funds was a fiscally prudent strategy to save the taxpayers money and to enable the township to promote recreation throughout the community.
The committee initially introduced a 3.5-cent increase, using $600,000 in sewer surplus funds, but the surplus was later restored to the sewer budget after Wall objected to using it because only half of the township’s residents pay into the sewer fund.