CRANBURY: Township to ask for 1.5-cent tax hike

David Kilby, Managing Editor
   CRANBURY — A continued decline in ratables has led the Township Committee to increase taxes another 1.5 cents this year to avoid dipping deeper into surplus.
   The committee introduced the proposed budget 4-1 at its meeting Monday.
   Committeeman James Taylor voted no while saying raising taxes is not the way to deal with decreasing ratables.
   The township’s total general budget would go from $11,696,172.34 last year to a proposed $10,822,802.38 this year. That includes $3,167,610.22 in operating expenses, $2,246,530.59 in debt service and $5,190,646.57 in miscellaneous department expenses.
   The tax rate would be 41 cents per $100 of assessed value, a 1.5-cent increase from last year. A house assessed at the township average of $605,000 would pay $2,480.50 in municipal taxes this year, an increase of about $7.50 a month.
   A hearing on the budget and tax resolution will be in Township Hall on March 26 at 7 p.m.
   This year, the township anticipates having $1,371,000 in surplus, down from last year’s $1,704,000. The township has $2,996,489.59 in miscellaneous revenues, again a decrease from last year’s $3,551,833.28.
   Last year, $6,327,339.06 was raised by taxes, and this year the township anticipates raising $6,331,533.79. Receipts from delinquent taxes went up slightly from $113,000 to $123,789, and the township anticipates raising about $3,800 more in taxes this year, but ratables did go down again.
   ”The budget process was not easy and took substantial time,” Mr. Taylor said in an email to The Cranbury Press. “As in recent years, we entered with another decline in assessed value, this time with the town losing over $57.4 million. This continued decline creates a wide gap in our revenue. We’re fixing a large cut with a Band-Aid when we really need stitches. When assessed value declines, you need to cut spending, attract new ratables and, as a last resort only, look at the revenue streams such as fees and property taxes.”
   He continued, “From the viewpoint of spending, I think the Township Committee is all in agreement that we have done our best to reduce costs and are comfortable that we are operating efficiently. Where the difference of opinion came into play was with regard to the level of tax increase.
   ”When I looked at the changes we have made and need to continue to make to attract new ratables, such as revising the Master Plan, it leads me to conclude we have started to set the groundwork to address the decline in assessed value over the next three to four years — the same period of time we looked at to determine our inflationary costs and the rate that the surplus was declining.
   ”Therefore, when I examined all the financial projections, the available data on development opportunities and considered that we raised taxes 2 cents last year, I could not support increasing the taxes by 1.5 cents this year.”
   ”We made cuts where necessary and where we felt we could while still allowing the township to be able to function the way it does and provide services everyone is used to,” said Denise Marabello, township business administrator.
   The township was able to propose a cut of $102,000 from the police budget when two officers retired this year. Cuts also are proposed for the Municipal Alliance budget. Its budget would be $35,982 for 2012, a $11,856 decrease from last year.
   ”Our budget is not much more than it was last year,” Ms. Marabello said, but she also pointed out the township only received about $55,000 in grants this year, compared to about $900,000 last year — mostly due to New Jersey reforestation tree grants.
   ”We cut the budget as much as we could to the point where we felt any additional cuts would become detrimental to the town,” Mayor David Cook said. “Bottom line for this year is that, with all the cutting involved and despite health care and pension benefit (increases), we were able to get the budget within $3,000 of last year.”
   He added, “We did not use as much surplus as last year, but more than we can replenish. If we do raise that 1.5 percent, we won’t go to the point where we go through the surplus. If we didn’t raise taxes, we would be kicking the budget problem down the road.”