Kudos to Tri-Town News Managing Editor Mark Rosman for stating simple truths that we all know (“Real Questions, Need Answers,” Tri- Town News, April 22). Politicians will promise anything to get elected and the alltime pandering answer from a candidate is that he plans to lower taxes and more importantly, Mr. Rosman concluded that “in New Jersey, there is no real way to lower property taxes.”
With some mayoral candidates once again promising lower taxes and fiscal responsibility, I thought it might make sense to look at the record of our elected officials regarding our property taxes over the last decade.
I wanted to find out if the most critical fiscal action to have taken place in Jackson during the last 10 years was really needed. Was it fiscally irresponsible or fiscally appropriate to raise taxes significantly in 2006? Was it necessary to correct the sins and mistakes of the prior administrations? I believe the financial records of Jackson will show that we did need a significant tax increase in 2006 to correct the previous administration’s lack of sound financial planning.
From 2000-05, the municipal tax rate declined from 62.6 cents to 59.9 cents per $100 of assessed valuation. However, at the same time, the amount to be raised through property taxes increased by 30 percent and township spending increased by 22 percent.
During this same period, the cost of living index increased by only 13.7 percent. So how do you fund a 30 percent increase in the tax levy and a 22 percent increase in spending while lowering the property tax rate?
You can accomplish this in a couple of ways. Find additional grant monies to balance the budget, benefit from new properties being added to the tax rolls or you can remove monies from reserve accounts to balance the budget or find other one-time gimmicks. Fiscal genius or creative accounting?
If you review the township’s audited statement, you will find that grant monies and state funding did not increase significantly. Property assessments on new residential and commercial properties, primarily Westlake and Metedeconk, increased from $1.9 billion to $2.7 billion, a 36 percent increase that added approximately $4.3 million to our township financial coffers.
This should have been enough to fund municipal services, as it represented onethird of the property tax base in the year 2000.
And then there were the one-time “revenue enhancements”: $2 million was reversed out of the Industrial Revenue Commission Trust Account to balance the budget in 2004 and 2005. We sold municipal assets to the tune of $1.1 million to help balance the budget in 2005. In total, there were over $4 million in one-time enhancements that were used to balance the budget during this period.
Jackson’s financial standing was built like a house of cards waiting for the slightest nudge to knock it down. Regardless of who was in office in 2006, there was going to be a major tax increase imposed on us. The financial gyrations of the past had laid the groundwork, and the growth in ratables had slowed to a crawl.
Now let’s go to the 2009 budget, where we see a modest increase in our property taxes. The controlled increases in the tax levy were necessary to address the built-in costs of government — increases in fuel costs, health care, pensions and gradual increases to cover inflation and new capital programs.
We also witnessed for the first time a cut in spending, which has not happened in over 20-something years. This is exactly the type of fiscal management that most prudent municipalities use to cover inflation, contracts and new capital programs.
Now ask yourself a simple question. If the critics of the tax increase all thought the budget was overinflated, as they claim today, then why haven’t they been able to identify the alleged excess and fiscally irresponsible actions? Actions that they took and approved in those prior year budgets and which they used accounting gimmicks to maintain an artificially low property tax.
Obviously the criticism is a ploy used by politicians who were responsible for putting Jackson in financial ruin.
They won’t identify the fluff or the fat because they all knew that the 2006 tax increase was inevitable. The tax increase was desperately needed, and without that tax increase the township would be in deeper dire straits.
Perhaps a New Jersey governor has finally gotten it right when he said, “Never forget, some of those shouting the loudest are the architects of the disaster we are now suffering. Do we really want another decade of economic failure?”
Or as Mr. Rosman wrote in his column, “Let me issue this word of caution right now for 2010. If you read a statement from any local politician in this newspaper or any other newspaper who says he or she is going to lower your property taxes if elected, DO NOT VOTE FOR THAT PERSON … I will not believe a word of what those candidates are saying, even if they offer an explanation of how they — out of all the public officials in a state that cannot control property taxes — will lower your property taxes.”
Paul Mayerowitz
Jackson