HOLMDEL — The Township Committee has decided not to use surplus sewer funds to offset the municipal tax rate and instead increase it an additional 3 cents to 6.5 cents per $100 of assessed valuation.
With the change, the municipal tax rate would be 36.8 cents, a 21.4 percent increase over last year’s 30.3 cents.
The public hearing is May 13.
If the revised plan is adopted, Chief Financial Officer Joe Annecharico said that the owner of a home assessed at $300,000 will pay an extra $195 a year in taxes.
As originally introduced, the tentative $14,498,665 budget for 2002, up about a million dollars from last year, carried a 3.5-cent tax rate increase. Following a hearing last week on the initial spending plan, the committee unanimously introduced an amendment eliminating $600,000 in surplus sewer funds from anticipated revenues.
Committeeman Terence Wall originally questioned the use of the money, and the rest of the committee eventually agreed that it was not fair to use it, since only half of Holmdel taxpayers pay into the sewer fund.
During the public hearing, former Mayor Gary Aumiller, Democratic Committee candidate Tony Orsini, Ralph Blumenthal, Sam Shramko, and Democratic Municipal Chairman Walter Wood all spoke out against the committee using the sewer surplus funds.
"I don’t think it’s right," Aumiller said. "The people who have sewers pay the same taxes as everyone else. If you take this money and keep it in the budget, you’re taking from half of the town that pays taxes and sewer fees and giving it to the other half of the town that only pays taxes. You are taking from Peter to pay Paul, and this is not fair."
Saying that this is the largest tax increase that the township has seen in the past few years, Committeeman Larry Fink recommended looking at employees’ salaries to make further cuts and cutting professional services.
Fink noted that employees’ salaries are the largest part of the budget, and that it had been a while since Town Hall operations were examined.
He also suggested reducing costs by scheduling consultant comments at the beginning of meetings, so the consultants do not have to be paid for sitting through hours of committee meetings. This suggestion has been mentioned previously.
"I really don’t find the salaries of the employees of Holmdel to be excessive in any way, shape, or form," Township Administrator Carol Williams said in response to Fink’s first suggestion.
Williams went on to say that over the last several years there has been a major increase in the work required by the township employees. "If you add work, you have to add hours. It seems to be an increasing problem," she said.
As an example, she cited the additional staff hours needed to update the master plan. "If you want to give people more work, you really have to expect that it will cost more money," she said.
Annecharico did not feel further cuts were possible. "These are the funds that are needed to operate this community in its present form through Dec. 31. I will not recommend to reduce any areas of the budget any further," he said.
Deputy Mayor Russell Dronne and Wall said they believed that Holmdel taxpayers would be willing to pay the additional tax in exchange for better services.