Councilman Bond suggests zero-base budgeting
By Matt Chiappardi, Staff Writer
HIGHTSTOWN The Borough Council has gotten 2009 budget hearings started early in order to brainstorm ways to compose a fiscal plan members hope will avoid a repeat of the double-digit municipal tax increases that have occurred over the past three years.
And Council President Walter Sikorski said the borough will put together a budget committee consisting of Councilmen Jeff Bond and Larry Quattrone and Councilman-elect Mike Theokas, an idea Councilman Dave Schneider was not happy about.
”This type of thing should be done the way it’s always done, out in the open, in front of the public,” he said.
As for other new ideas during the earliest council meeting in members’ memories on Nov. 13, Mr. Bond, floated the idea of scrapping budgets based on the previous fiscal year, and starting over from the ground up.
Mr. Bond explained that approach as a “zero-base budget.” That means the council, while composing the fiscal plan, will start with a blank slate.
That idea was met with some skepticism.
”I don’t think we should spend a lot of time trying to put together a zero-base budget when I think that’s impossible,” said Councilman Larry Quattrone.
Councilman Schneider took the opportunity to voice his concern that he believes a zero-increase budget isn’t realistic given the economic times, although he did acknowledge that he wasn’t familiar with the idea of a zero-base budget.
He also strongly objected to the idea of a budget committee, calling the idea “out of line.”
In a tense exchange, Mr. Bond countered that the idea wasn’t to conduct budget meetings in secret, but to help expedite the process. Nonetheless, Mr. Bond did say, “in the end we’ll wind up having just as many (public budget hearings) as we did last year.”
Councilman Sikorski said the borough is now at a “critical crossroads,” and suggested that some services could be cut or even eliminated that only benefit a few people in the community. He would not specify which services were on that table.
Unlike past years when budget meetings began in February, no beginning tax rate was mentioned at Thursday’s session.
Last year, borough residents wound up enduring an approximate 15-cent municipal tax increase that would have been 24 cents if not for $200,000 the borough received in extraordinary aid in July.
For more on this story, turn to the Oct. 21 edition of the Windsor-Hights Herald.

