As one who has taken a deep interest in West Windsor’s budgeting process over the last several years, I want to correct some serious prevailing misconceptions.
First, contrary to the myth that the Administration and Council President Khanna have continued to promulgate as recently as Monday, March 12’s Council meeting, we were under absolutely NO obligation, legal or otherwise, to introduce the budget as early as February 27, the date of the previous business meeting. This was made very clear by Local Finance Notice 2012-2, issued on January 23, 2012, by the Division of Local Government Services in the Department of Community Affairs. This notice gave us a revised introduction date of March 9, or the next regularly scheduled meeting after that where formal action could be taken. Notice 2012-2 was prominently included in the budget binder that all Council members received, and there was absolutely no excuse for the Administration and Mr. Khanna to have ignored it. Nevertheless, it was introduced on February 27 by a 3 to 2 vote.
Why, then, did they ignore it? The obvious answer is that they did not want any public discussion or backtalk from taxpayers before introduction. But for many years now, with the late Michael J. Herbert in the attorney’s chair on the dais, this was allowed. In fact, there is nothing in the Faulkner Act that says you can’t have informal public discussions before introduction, and the public has greatly appreciated this courtesy in the past. It seems that Mr. Khanna wants to run township affairs in the same way he runs his private business.
Unfortunately, introduction of the budget also constituted Council’s “approval” as far as the county and state are concerned. This is distinct from “adoption,” which cannot occur until after the public hearing on April 16. Until then, it is our job to try to get whatever budgetary amendments we and Council members feel are justified ready to be introduced so that a vote can be taken on these amendments.
As one hypothetical example, we could appropriate $5.435 million from the fund balance (i.e. our cash on hand) instead of the Administration’s recommendation of $4.435 million. This would result in a decrease from last year’s municipal rate of $0.369 per $100 of assessed valuation to $0.360 instead of the Administration’s proposed increase to $0.377. This is a full 1.7-cent difference and would give the owner of a $500,000 property a decrease in municipal taxes of $85.
What would be the downside of appropriating an extra $1,000,000 from the fund balance this year? Not much! Over the last seven years, our fund balance as of January 1 has averaged $7,221,000, with a low of $6,591,000 in 2006 and a high of $8,251,000 in 2008. As of January 1 of this year it was $7,054,000. Keeping so much unused money in the bank, earning very low interest, is unjustified. Mayor Hsueh never misses a chance to boast about West Windsor’s “AAA” bond rating, but I would challenge him to show us exactly what would happen to this rating, and to our interest rate on new or refinanced bonds, if we took this one simple step.
Of course, nobody would propose reducing the fund balance year after year. I would suggest that we shoot for an average of about $5 million, which would seem adequate to handle any likely contingencies. If experience shows that this was a poor idea, we could re-establish the previous practice.
John A. Church, West Windsor
