By Frank Mustac, Contributor
The Hopewell Township Committee recently introduced a proposed $23.4 million municipal budget for 2017 that will raise the tax rate by approximately 1.7 percent., That means the property tax bill for municipal spending charged to owners of the average assessed home in town will go up by about $28 more than a year ago., A public hearing on the budget will be held during the April 24 township committee meeting, after which committee members will vote on adoption of the spending plan., For 2017, the average assessed home in the township is valued at $464,800. With a proposed rate of 36.98 cents per $100 of assessed value, the property tax bill for municipal spending for the owner of the average home is estimated to be $1,718, which is $28.22 higher than last year., The municipal budget does not include county or school taxes., In 2016, the municipal budget was $22.3 million, so the proposed 2017 spending plan is 4.6 percent more than a year ago., The tax levy for municipal purposes for 2016, meaning the total taxes that all property owners will pay combined, is about $14.68 million — up 2.02 percent from last year. There are 7,308 taxable properties in Hopewell Township as of Oct. 1, 2016. The total assessed value of all those properties combined is about $3.97 billion., Total debt service is one of the other largest budget line items at about $5.2 million. The figure is a 1.8-percent decrease compared to last year., As it usually does, the township will be using a portion of its surplus as revenue for the municipal budget. However, about twice as much surplus will be utilized for that purpose this year than last year., For 2017, $4,084,148 in surplus will be used, which is a roughly 100-percent increase from a year ago., Former Hopewell Township Mayor Harvey Lester spoke at the March 27 township committee meeting to express his concern that far too much of the 2017 municipal budget is being financed from surplus., Using 20 percent of the nearly $12 million total surplus from 2016, Lester said, is tantamount to “using your savings to pay for your lifestyle. Sooner or later you know that it will not end well.”, In a letter to the editor, Lester said, “the State of New Jersey cautions against using more surplus in a spending plan than was returned to the surplus in unspent funds from the previous year. This 2017 spending plan blatantly violates that prescription by using over 110 percent more in rainy day money in 2017 than was returned to surplus in unspent funds in 2016.”, Current Hopewell Township Mayor Kevin Kuchinski rebutted Lester’s concerns in a prepared statement, stating that a sizable portion of the $4 million in surplus will go toward reducing debt., “As of December 2016, the township’s surplus fund finished with a balance of (about) $11.9 million, which is equivalent to almost 10 months of tax revenues for the township,” Mayor Kuchinski said in the statement. “We finished 2016 with one of the highest surplus totals in history, and expect to finish 2017 almost 30 percent above the past 20-year average of $8 million in surplus.”
