Allentown, Plumsted and Washington all secured state funding through a homeland security grant.
By: Lauren Burgoon
The tight budget is rearing its ugly head again. New Jersey’s strained finances already caused the state to withhold aid increases to schools and now towns are feeling the same fiscal pinch.
The only extra help from the state came to three local towns that have police departments. The extra money is called a homeland security grant, but is really meant to alleviate property taxes for towns that finance their own police forces. Allentown, Plumsted and Washington all secured the grant for the second year, but the money does not increase aid amounts since the first grants were handed out last year.
Upper Freehold and Millstone also will have to make do with the same state aid as last year.
The flat aid actually represents an overall drop in the state’s financial support of towns because municipalities will have to meet rising expenses with the same amount of money. The end result for local towns is the same story as school budgets possible tax increases across the board.
Most towns wait until state aid comes out before introducing a municipal budget. Locally, Upper Freehold is the only town to introduce a 2005 budget so far. The preliminary budget calls for a 2-cent tax rate increase this year. The town’s budget increase is largely attributed to unavoidable costs, like road supplies and insurance, which more state aid could have helped the town absorb with less tax impact. The town was able to pass a budget last year that featured no tax increase.
Upper Freehold will receive $734,401 in state aid this year. The funding makes up about 10 percent of the preliminary $6.8 million budget adopted by the Township Committee this month.
The state is forcing Millstone to live with flat aid this year too. The town will get $1.1 million in financial assistance, but what effect it will have on the budget won’t be known for a few weeks because even preliminary budget numbers are not available yet.
"(The Township Committee) hasn’t had a budget discussion yet," Millstone Business Administrator James Pickering said. "We probably won’t have an introduction until sometime in April."
The committee has a scheduled budget workshop on April 2, when officials meet for hours to hammer out preliminary numbers.
Millstone had the lowest tax rate in Monmouth County last year, although some critics characterize it as artificially low. The town’s tax rate dropped from 10 cents to 3.5 several years ago, but last year’s committee approved a hike back to 7 cents per $100 of assessed property value.
Washington’s state aid will remain at $1,793,060 this year. The town initially received less last year, but secured the $70,000 homeland security grant midway through 2004 so the money could be applied to tax relief last year. Thanks to the size of the town and Police Department, Washington received the grant again.
Chief Financial Officer Karen Baldino said Monday she, the business administrator and budget subcommittee have already started to meet but no information is ready for release yet. She declined to speculate about what size budget the committee may consider or whether certain costs will increase this year.
"Everything still depends on whether we have cuts to appropriations or increases on revenue," Ms. Baldino said.
Homeland security grants also are coming to Plumsted and Allentown, which will receive $50,000 and $25,000, respectively. Officials in both towns were not available to comment on the state aid or municipal budgets this week.