The Hopewell Township Committee has worked hard over recent years to responsibly manage township finances. These efforts culminated in 2022 with a 2% reduction in the overall tax rate for Hopewell Township.
Additionally, this year’s municipal budget held spending to less than a 2% increase despite inflationary pressures of 8 to 9%.
Looking ahead, I wanted to share three additional actions the Township Committee is taking to help keep a lid on property taxes.
First, the Hopewell Township Committee has been working to improve the long-term finances of the township by reducing debt and eliminating the associated interest costs. Since 2014, we have cumulatively reduced debt by over 20%.
In addition, the Committee has worked steadfastly to attract new commercial ratables to the township, such as with the revitalization of the former BMS Campus. This help increases the total tax base for the community, thereby reducing the share of taxes paid by residential property owners.
Second, the township secured $2.59 million in incremental revenues this month, which will directly benefit township residents. These new revenues consist of one-time payments required of Lennar and Woodmont, the companies building new inclusionary neighborhoods in Hopewell Township as a part of the township’s 2017 bipartisan affordable housing settlement.
These payments are separate from the revenue that is anticipated under the PILOT agreements for these properties and will enable the township to reduce debt, strengthen reserves and directly fund future year capital projects. Importantly, these new revenues also reinforce the township’s ability to exceed AAA levels of fund balance by maintaining a reserve of more than 6 months of township revenue.
Finally, we are working closely with our engineering team to improve the efficiency of our annual roads program. Road maintenance and repair currently accounts for the largest share of spending in the township’s annual capital budget.
In recent years, we lowered costs by accelerating the timing of our capital budget and separating it from our operating budget. This allowed us to get our roads program out to bid ahead of many other municipalities when contractors had down time, enabling us to both lower costs and repair and replace more roads for a given budget.
Building on this progress, our outside engineering firm, VanCleef, conducted an in-depth review of every road in the township this year, so that we could prioritize future year repairs and maintenance and identify potential savings opportunities.
Coming out of this study, the team found three significant savings opportunities: one, we identified low-cost opportunities to extend the life of township roads, including a new sealing process that will be implemented 5-6 years after a road surface is milled and repaved and seal early cracks. We expect this will extend the useful life of roads by five-plus years or over 20%.
Two, we plan to use a new micropaving process for many township roads that are currently chip-sealed. This new micro-paving process results in a smoother road surface and doubles the useful life of each repair, lowering ongoing costs significantly.
Three, we are creating a new 25-year road program for the township, leveraging findings from this study to prioritize road repairs and replacement. We expect this new road program will reduce the annual cost of our road program by an additional 10-15%.
With the successful reinvention of the BMS and Merrill Lynch campuses, anticipated new revenues from PILOT agreements, our ongoing efforts to attract new small businesses to Hopewell Valley and our efforts to make our roads program more efficient, the future is looking bright for Hopewell Township finances.
If you have other ideas on how we can make Hopewell Township government more effective and efficient, please feel free to reach out to me or any one of the other committee members. My direct email is kdkhopewelltwp@gmail.com or you can reach me via phone at (609) 439-8044.
Kevin Kuchinski is a member of the Hopewell Township Committee and the committee’s finance liaison. Hopewell Township provided this content.
An aerial view of the Princeton West Innovation Campus in Hopewell, of which BeiGene now owns 42 acres.,
