BY SUE MORGAN
Staff Writer
SEA BRIGHT – Property owners here can expect local taxes to go up by about $125 this calendar year under the $4.5 million municipal budget adopted by the Borough Council last week.
The April 18 public hearing and subsequent unanimous vote on the budget for calendar year 2006 went off without a hitch even before a room filled with spectators.
The adopted budget carries a property tax hike of 3.3 cents and calls for a total tax levy of $3 million, according to council President William “Jack” Keeler, who also oversees the governing body’s finance committee.
The total adopted budget for calendar year 2006 is $4,510,403.31. The total tax levy equals $3,037,981.77, according to figures provided by Michael Bascom, the borough’s chief financial officer.
As a result, the new municipal property tax rate will rise from 57.3 cents to 60.6 cents per $100 of assessed valuation.
Rounding that figure off to 61 cents, municipal taxes on a property assessed at the borough average of $375,000 would amount to $2,287.50 yearly or $190.63 monthly.
The $375,000 is the average assessed value used by the borough following its last revaluation of properties in 2004, according to Bascom.
The total municipal budget of $4,510,403.31 amounts to $231,881.43 more than the total spending plan of $4,278,521.88 for calendar year 2005.
“This budget matches future needs and priorities against the resources we have,” Keeler said prior to the roll call.
The tax hike can be attributed to rising fuel costs and increased costs of pensions along with the loss of some revenues, Keeler said.
Nonetheless, the governing body has endeavored to maintain municipal services and to initiate improvements at a minimal cost to taxpayers, the council president pointed out.
“One of the most important tasks we try to pursue is a stable tax rate,” Keeler said.
One such initiative is the ongoing Downtown Infrastructure Improvement Program (DIIP), which involves replacing sanitary sewers, enlarging storm drains, placement of a pump station, and repaving along four centrally located streets, he noted.
However, it was not municipal taxes, but the $1.3 million that the Shore Regional High School district in West Long Branch has requested this year from Sea Bright to educate roughly 20 students from the borough that had residents in attendance talking.
Borough officials share the residents’ sentiments that the money would be better spent at home in Sea Bright on the DIIP work or even for a new fire truck, Keeler said.
“Think what we could do with $1 million,” Keeler said.
One resident, clearly incensed by the district tax hike, even suggested that borough officials not pay Shore Regional’s tuition bill out of protest.
Relating a long-past incident that occurred in town when a former Sea Bright mayor was imprisoned for refusing to pay the school bill, Keeler informed the resident that such action would be unlawful.
As Keeler spoke, residents were casting votes on the $13 million Shore Regional budget for academic year 2006-07, as well as for the Sea Bright elementary school budget, in the next room at the Cecile Norton Community Center.
By the time the polls closed, both budgets had been defeated.
Sea Bright residents are getting the short shrift when it comes to paying to educate public high school students, Keeler agreed.
While Shore Regional’s other sending communities – West Long Branch, Oceanport and Monmouth Beach – send more students to the grade nine through 12 school, Sea Bright’s financial burden is lopsided, Keeler said.
Due to a funding formula set by the New Jersey Department of Education via “thorough and efficient education” legislation some years ago, the borough’s share of the tax burden is based on property assessments, not on how many students attend the school, he went on.
“Not only is it unfair, it is an injustice,” Keeler said. “We pay about 13 percent of the costs, but send three percent of the student body.”
Essentially, Sea Bright taxpayers “subsidize” West Long Branch and Oceanport taxpayers, whose students make up most of the school’s population, the council president said.
“That’s not a reflection on [West Long Branch and Oceanport] or the people running Shore Regional. It’s a reflection on the state formula,” Keeler said. “Please keep that in mind.”
In the interim, Sea Bright officials are closely watching a legal challenge to the state funding formula filed by Long Beach Township against the Southern Regional School District in Ocean County, said Councilwoman Dina Long.
Long Beach Township, like Sea Bright, has taken issue with how much it is charged to send a small number of students to the Southern Regional district, Long explained.
The Shore Regional budget for 2006-07 called for Sea Bright to bear the largest property tax increase of the four towns despite having the lowest property values and sending the least amount of students, said Long, who chairs the council’s education committee.
The formula is more based on assessed property values than upon how many students actually attend the school in question, she continued.
Under the defeated Shore Regional budget, Sea Bright’s district school tax rate was to jump by 2.9 cents from the current 27.8 cents to 30.7 cents per $100 of assessed valuation.
District officials have attributed the property tax hikes in all four member communities to higher transportation costs and to increased costs of out-of-district placements, Long said.
The defeated Shore Regional school budget is expected to go before the governing bodies of Sea Bright and the other three sending towns for reworking next month.