BY MELISSA CIFELLI
Staff Writer
An ordinance that would have increased rates for water and sewer services by 10 percent was rejected at a special meeting of the South Brunswick Township Council Tuesday.
Under the proposed ordinance, the average customer would have paid $2.15 per quarter for water use up to 18,000 gallons, up from $1.96.
According to Chief Financial Officer Joe Monzo, the rate increase was necessary to generate sufficient funds for the 2005 sewer/water budget.
A motion by Mayor Frank Gambatese for a vote on the ordinance, however, failed to receive a second by either council member Joe Camarota or Deputy Mayor Carol Barrett. Councilmen Christopher Killmurray and Charles Carley were not present.
Camarota said he did not vote in favor of the hike because he felt the council had not been given sufficient responses to inquiries on where to make cuts and ways to increase revenue, despite several weeks of budget meetings.
“We owe it to ourselves to have the budget for 2005 done by 2005,” Camarota said.
Camarota called the proposed 7-cent tax rate increase to the overall municipal budget unacceptable and said the water/sewer rate increase was a Band-Aid approach to balancing the budget.
According to Monzo, revenue generation continues to be a problem for the water/sewer budget.
Because the ordinance will not be adopted by the end of June and put into effect for the next billing cycle as planned, the increase in rates may be higher than 10 percent, he said. Monzo, however, said he did not know how much higher those rates could be.
Despite the defeat to the ordinance, Camarota said he hopes to have the requested budget information by the end of this week and work to have the water/sewer budget adopted with use of special meetings by the end of June.
In March, the proposed 2005 budget was presented to the council which carried a 7-cent tax increase from the 2004 budget.