Mansfield officials consider a plan to eliminate bonded expenditures on municipal projects that were not started.
By: William Wichert
MANSFIELD Township officials are looking to tidy up municipal finances, because, according to the chief financial officer, the township seems to be borrowing more money than it spends and paying back loans that have not been fully used.
Over the last seven years, the township has made over $500,000 in debt payments on loans for municipal projects that were never started. Mayor Arthur Puglia said this week that some older projects were initiated by former Township Committees, but not carried on by newer ones, while other more recent projects are still being finalized.
The current Township Committee was expected to take a step toward reducing the municipal debt at its Wednesday night meeting, when officials planned on voting on the final adoption of an ordinance that would eliminate the bonded expenditures on municipal projects that were not started but have already cost the township about $148,000 in bond debt payments.
Mansfield has spent $148,000 of taxpayer dollars so far to pay back $217,004 worth of loans, or bonds, it took out in the late 1990s to complete the projects, said township Chief Financial Officer Joseph Monzo in a phone interview Tuesday.
"That’s just money ($148,000) we spent and didn’t get anything for it," said Mr. Monzo.
The township also has been paying off bond debt without spending the borrowed money on municipal projects in its handling of a $5.5 million bond given to the township by the Burlington County Bridge Commission in 2003.
Of this 20-year bond, about $4.8 million has not been spent, but the township already put $417,000 of tax money toward the debt payments on the bond this past year, and it is expected to pay the same amount in 2005, Mr. Monzo said.
"You need to spend it. You can’t borrow money like that and not spend it," said Mr. Monzo, who said the township has only spent $700,000 of the $5.5 million bond on various municipal projects, mostly involving farmland preservation costs.
With the approval of this ordinance, which was unanimously introduced at the Dec. 8 meeting, the Township Committee would cancel an appropriation of $1.3 million from the Bridge Commission bond.
The ordinance also cancels the $217,004 in previous appropriations, including $65,504 from 1999 and $148,500 from 1997, and allows the municipality to use those funds to pay off the remaining bond debt, Mr. Monzo said.
The $65,504 was originally meant to go toward the construction of a multipurpose township building, or recreation center, and the $148,500 would have been divided up between renovations to the township civic center on Route 206 and the municipal complex on East Main Street, he said. The $1.3 million was slated for the purchase of the Stevenson Lumber Yard on Atlantic Avenue last year that never took place, Mr. Monzo said.
Although a residential developer is expected to build a recreation center in the township within the next few years, Mayor Puglia said the Township Committee has not discussed making any renovations to the civic center and the municipal building in several years.
Mr. Monzo said canceling these three appropriations would help the township’s credit rating down the road. "I wanted to have our year-end financial statements reflect what our true situation is," he said. "If we go out for any other debt, we’re just going to add on to that (the current bond debt)."
Mr. Monzo said he is awaiting direction from township officials on how to spend the remaining $4.8 million of the Bridge Commission bond, but Mayor Puglia said the Township Committee is still in the process of prioritizing its expenses.
"How do we get rid of it (the bond money)?" Mayor Puglia said in a phone interview on Tuesday. "That’s a lousy way of saying it, but there are priorities. There’s ways to spend the money, but do you just spend it?"
Some definite priorities, the mayor said, include purchasing a new garbage truck, making repairs to Island Road and Mansfield Road East, and installing a public sewer system at the Lynwood Farms development, located at Oak Lynn Drive and Columbus Road.
Mayor Puglia said about $1 million worth of repairs to Island Road are expected to begin within the next few months, but that he is still awaiting financial assistance from the county and other neighboring municipalities to rebuild Mansfield Road East, which is the main artery to the Northern Burlington County Regional School District. The Lynwood Farms sewer work is in the middle of the initial bidding process, he said.
But these projects may be further derailed by other needed expenses that will have to come out of the Bridge Commission money, Mayor Puglia said. For instance, the township is going to be forced to contribute about $900,000 toward the county’s preservation of the 287-acre Greenberg Farm on Route 206, which is going up for public auction next spring, he said.
"Money’s a problem," the mayor said.

