The South Brunswick municipal tax rate will not increase this year.
The budget was introduced at the May 27 Township Council meeting, and taxes will remain at the same rate as last year, despite a decrease of $416,000 in state aid, according to township Chief Finance Officer Joseph Monzo.
The municipal tax rate will be 62.5 cents per $100 of assessed value, as it was last year.
Monzo said it was difficult to reduce the budget after learning that state aid would decrease, because officials believed they had introduced an appropriate budget.
Monzo said that collecting delinquent taxes was one way they were able to reduce the budget. Another was to take money out of the surplus, using $9 million of an available $9.8 million. Snow-removal spending was also reduced, since there was not much snow this year.
Monzo said that taking money out of the surplus was the only option if they wanted to avoid an increase in the tax rate.
“Without cutting any services, that was the only way,” Monzo said. “People want the tax rate to stay the same, but if you start cutting services, they complain.”
Monzo said the tax rate could have been raised by 11 cents, which was the cap, but officials chose not to.
In addition to the decreased state aid, the town also had to deal with the increase of over $800,000 in pension expenditures.
“It went up this year, and it will go up again next year,” Watkins said.
There will be budget meetings June 3 and 10, both at 6:30 p.m. At the June 3 meeting, discussions will include the fund budget, the library and the Board of Health. Utilities and the capital budget will be discussed at the June 10 meeting. The anticipated adoption date for the budget is the June 24 council meeting, which will begin at 7:30 p.m.