As budget talks continued at the Monday, March 26 town council business meeting, two resolutions aimed at a $463,000 reduction were introduced. Council voted 3-2 for the proposed budget to eliminate $200,000 from liquor license revenue, $100,000 from the fund balance, $100,000 coming from increased revenue projection, and $63,000 from a reduction in operating expenses.
“What was approved was the framework for getting the budget to reflect a zero cent increase, possibly for the first time in West Windsor’s history,” Councilwoman Linda Geevers said.
Councilman Bryan Maher led the charge to chop the proposed budget and attack the township’s costs. He met resistance, but delivered a strong message nonetheless.
“There’s a new sheriff in town!” exclaimed Maher, after refuting Council President Kamal Khanna’s thoughts against reducing the mayor’s proposed $37,340,000 budget.
More than a sheriff, Maher resembled a marksman, shooting down comments from Business Administrator Robert Hary, Township CFO Louth, and Khanna. At several times during the meeting Maher was asked to let others speak, and at one point Township Attorney Michael W. Herbert told Maher he was in violation of Robert’s Rules of Order.
In a follow-up interview Maher said he did get overzealous with some of his comments, and at one point he received a text message from his wife telling him to calm down. Maher clarified that his comments should not be confused with lobbying to become mayor or chief of police.
“From a fiscal standpoint we are going to be hawks because the administration has been approving expenses which should never have been approved, and that’s led to increased tax levies. I do not believe there’s been significant scrutiny involved,” he said.
Maher’s objective remains clear: cuts can and should happen.
“I submitted $170,000 in expense cuts, to which the administration responded. My proposals didn’t include a single employee reduction or a single reduction in salary to any existing employee. Simply by going line by line through 24 pages and seeing what in the budget was fluff, for lack of a better word, it was pretty easy to get to $170,000,” Maher said.
One key issue Maher opposed is the spending of $2 million in liquor license revenues for upgrades to the municipal complex, including the post office building (WW-P News, March 16)
“My frustration is that the mayor doesn’t want to budge one bit on allocating $2 million towards the municipal complex. I think it’s ludicrous and I think that at best we should spend $1 million for the project, split up the rest, and give three years of tax relief to taxpayers at $333,000 per year. That means we could lower taxes one percent in each of the next three years. At the end of the three years, in year four, we’d explain to residents that taxes are going up one percent because we gave you three years of a one percent decrease. I think they’d be okay with that,” Maher says.
Khanna immediately warned Maher of the pitfalls of using one-time revenue, such as part of the liquor license amount, towards formulating the budget. Mayor Hsueh has been adamant on this point because of West Windsor’s history of financial stability and his plans for the town’s economic future. He says there’s no such thing as using one-shot revenue towards the municipal budget.
“It’s a bad financial practice because the money won’t come in again next year,” Hsueh said in an interview on March 28.
Hsueh says if the municipal complex renovation costs $1 million the other million should be used to bring down debt service.
“We talk about being a sustainable community, but financially people have to have that long-term vision. I want people to stop thinking about the municipal budget as a one-year budget — the municipal budget is every year’s budget, we have to think about next year and the year after and so on. Without financial stability there will be nothing for the future,” Hsueh said.
Khanna maintained his stance that the proposed 2012 budget is “damn good” and it is the best he has seen so far in his three years on Council.
“I’m sticking to my guns that we’ve put together a very nice budget. I worked with the administration for over three months to put together the best budget they’ve ever done. From my standpoint the work was already done before it [the budget] even got here. I cannot look at it as what was the best budget ever and now say no, it doesn’t look good to me,” Khanna said in a follow-up interview.
Hsueh expanded on that sentiment, saying that in his experience in township government since 1993, this year’s stands as West Windsor’s best budget.
“This is a clear financial proposal that has taken long-term implications into account. With what we’re doing now, in a few more years West Windsor will be very proud of being one of the lowest in the state in terms of property taxes. If you look at all the towns around this area, their property tax rates are going in up and down spikes but we have been very stable. If we keep doing it this way, eventually we are going to be ahead of everybody,” Hsueh says.
At the March 26 council meeting Maher argued that the administration has “grossly underestimated” the potential for UCC (uniform commercial code) revenues to come to the township. Last year UCC fees accounted for $2.1 million in revenue but this year the administration is only budgeting for $775,000 in UCC fees to come in.
“Even in the depths of the worst recession since the depression we didn’t go under a million. Why would we go to $775,000?” Maher asked.
Maher says by doing three things: taking half of his proposed $170,000 in expense cuts, splitting the $1 million from liquor license revenues over three years, and increasing the UCC revenues to one million, there would be no tax rate increase in West Windsor — there would actually be a tax rate decrease.
Geevers proposed a different idea, one she equated to giving the budget a trim rather than a crew cut. “If you adjust revenue $200,000 and take 10 percent of the $2 million from the sale of the liquor licenses that’s already $400,000 in savings,” Geevers said.
Although a resolution with Geevers proposal passed, Khanna feels that it will be merely “under consideration” from now until the April 16 deadline for West Windsor to adopt the budget.
“It doesn’t mean anything in the final analysis. My job is that from the time the budget is introduced to answer all the questions Council has about the budget, regardless of how noisy it gets. It’s all a part of the game, it’s not the end,” he says.
To Khanna the budget’s bottom line isn’t the root of the problem. He gave an explanation of alternate ways of reducing costs the township incurs each year — improving procedures for every department.
“If the assembly line is working left to right, figure out a way if it can work right to left so it works better. Or mechanize them if they’re not fully mechanized. Or get rid of a useless service, and go for more shared services. These are the four key elements to giving us a better operating budget,” Khanna said.
Meanwhile Mayor Hsueh believes the resolutions to cut $463,000 only consider lowering this year’s budget, not for future years.
“That’s not my view of financial budgeting. I will be willing to look into all of Council’s recommendations but there has to be some clear justification and analysis of it,” the mayor said.
After hearing Council’s recommendation Hsueh will come up with his list of options. He says that over the 11 years he’s overseen the budget process he’s very proud of the financial stability achieved by West Windsor.
“I’m not going to just give that away — I’m going to think about next year, the year after and 20 years from now for this town. I know some council members will say that if I don’t bring the budget increase to zero then I will face political problems. But I’m not thinking about my own political future. I think about the right thing to do for this town,” Hsueh said.
Since the council meeting Hsueh has spoken with council members Khanna, Borek and Samonte as well as Louth and Hary. But he says Bryan Maher has still not accepted his invitation to discuss the township finances one-on-one.
“I appreciate his ideas and with mutual respect we can look into all these ideas. But you cannot do it ‘either my way or no way’ and stop others from giving their opinion. If you come up with good ideas I’m open to discussion,” Hsueh said.
Khanna was slightly taken aback by Maher’s tone at the meeting, saying members of Council had different approaches to sharing their opinions. “He was very loud and that’s not my style of doing business.,” Khanna said.
Maher questioned whether it’s fair for Khanna to have worked with Mayor Hsueh and the administration to develop the budget “behind the back of the rest of Council.”
“Council’s supposed to be the cross-check to what the administration wants. To the extent Kamal is involved in developing the budget, I have a little bit of a problem with that,” Maher says.
He also denies a coordinated effort between Geevers, Kristina Samonte, or him to confer on budget cuts.
“It just needed to be brought up. Council people can and do talk amongst each other on a regular basis and it’s typically one-to-one. But I have a very different level of appetite for tackling this budget than anybody on Council, first of all. I think Linda wants to tackle it, but not to the extent that I do, and I think Kristina wants to tackle it, but not to the extent Linda does. I think George Borek wants to do something but he’s not sure of how far he wants to go, and Kamal wants to do nothing,” Maher says.
Maher says because Khanna wants to do nothing “he’s out of the equation” and the budget boils down to the other four finding a common ground. Maher also says Khanna was adamant about the plight of West Windsor taxpayers when each department head made their presentations to Council, but he hasn’t followed through to adjust the budget.
“When council members bring actual solutions to alleviate taxpayer pain, he doesn’t want to discuss it. It’s a bit hypocritical,” Maher said.
During public comments there were suggestions to trim the budget. Debbie Hepler of Dean Court brought a bucket full of calculators for members of council to use.
“First I thought maybe there’s perhaps a problem with corruption, or incompetence. But I know you’re all nice people so I thought that you all didn’t know how to use a subtraction key on a calculator, so I went and bought these for you guys, all different colors for both boys and girls,” Hepler said.
