West Windsor Council will continue its ongoing budget review on Tuesday, February 22.##M:[more]##
Last month Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh presented council with a $28.99 million municipal budget that calls for a 3-cent increase in taxes. As proposed, the package is a 3.7 percent increase over last year’s $27.9 spending plan.
Council has already held two workshops with department heads in police, emergency services, the township clerk’s office, construction and code enforcement, engineering, and planning and zoning.
During the February 22 meeting, council is slated to look at budgets for public works, building maintenance, the mayor’s office and administration, and the finance division. Council will review the health and human services department, recreation, and revenues on Monday, March 7. All meetings will be held at 7 p.m. in the municipal building.
All members of council say they are pleased with the low tax increase, but all had individual areas they would like to address.
“There haven’t been any major issues or road blocks,” says Council President Franc Gambatese. “We did decide that we we have to come up with policies to create consistency from year to year.”
For example, he says the township needs policies on vehicle replacement, road repairs and construction, and keeping technology up to date at town hall.
Gambatese says the budget is realistic, “but at the same time government by its nature is wasteful. I come from a business environment where you’re expected to do more with less.
“So when I see in the budget that we have to buy 10 new vehicles, I say to myself, ‘Why do we have to buy any at all?’”
Councilwoman Jackie Alberts says one of her concerns regards the capital budget, a portion of the package required by state law that outlines anticipated capital expenditures over the next six years.
“This year’s capital budget has the same defect as every other that I have seen in my six years on council,” Alberts says. “It doesn’t match up with past capital budgets. The way it works in West Windsor, we don’t really do a six year capital budget. It usually turns out that the first year is solid and the second is somewhat solid.”
Alberts says in the area of expenditures, she has a problem with the planning board budget. “What leapt out at me was that we have what’s been declared as peace in our time. For the first time, in many years, we’re not dealing with any litigation. Despite that, last year $105,”000 was set aside for lawyers and, and this year we’re budgeting $106,”000. Where’s the peace dividend?”
Ironically, the peace already seems to have ended. The township this week announced that a $700,”000 lawsuit had been filed by a township landowner.
The Akselrad family, with whom the township settled a 19-year-old affordable housing lawsuit in November, is again suing the township. The Akselrads want to be reimbursed for legal fees they claim they accrued in their fight against the town.
Meanwhile, Alberts says she believes the way council performs its review process could be handled differently. “We spend several nights going line by line over various departments’ budgets, and then we reserve only one night to look at personnel and revenue.
Says Kristin Appelget: “I certainly would have liked to have seen zero increase, but it’s hard when you start to take a look at the services we are providing, and that the residents demand.”
“I have some specific concerns in regard to personnel,” Appelget adds. “It seems that there are an abnormal and unwarranted number of promotions and new positions in the budget.”
“I think we would be setting some bad precedents. There are needless positions being filled and/or created, and promotions and salary increases where I don’t understand the rationale. My concern is a significant increase in the number of high-salary management positions and I see that continuing. It’s creating spheres of influence that perhaps don’t always mean work will get done in more productive ways.”
“I don’t expect to see a lot off commotion in our budget discussions,” says Alison Miller. “It was a great relief to see a budget with a 3-cent increase as opposed to 7 cents or 9 cents.”
Miller says that level of retained surplus seems “really, really, really high” but there may be sound fiscal reasons to keep it at that level this year. “I’m looking forward to having our chief financial officer delineate them for us.
Under the proposed budget, some 71 percent of the overall surplus of about $3.5 million will go towards lowering taxes. The retained surplus of 4.97 percent — about $1.4 million — is the highest level since 1991.
“The only reason I can see for us cutting the level of surplus (and applying it to tax relief) would be if something were to come in and push the tax increase over 3 cents.”
Charles Morgan calls the budget “a pretty good document. I hate to see the three pennies, but I’m not happy with some of the projects we’re not doing. I hate to say it, but I’d be inclined to want to add another penny for some of the things we’re not doing.”
