On Monday, May 19, Hopewell Township adopted its 2025 municipal budget, which was the culmination of months of work by department heads, the township committee and our chief financial officer.
The 2025 Municipal Budget includes a nearly 1% decrease in the municipal tax rate—at a time when U.S. inflation remains at +2.4% annually. This reduction was made possible through reduced municipal debt, disciplined spending, and new revenue sources, all while continuing to enhance services and invest in our community’s future.
Increasing services while reducing the tax rate
Some key budget highlights include continued investment to expand and fortify the township’s health, police and public works departments. We learned during Covid that public health is a critical and often underappreciated segment of municipal government. With a fully staffed health department, even in the face of federal budget cuts, we are well positioned to manage whatever challenges lay ahead of us, be it an emerging disease, continued restaurant inspections that ensure you can safely go out to eat in the Hopewell Valley, or something that we have not yet anticipated.
Further, we have expanded our Police force by 10% to meet the needs of our growing community, including the creation of a community policing division. The HTPD has also implemented a new hiring process where candidates are hired before they attend the police academy, so that HTPD leadership is involved in their training from the very beginning. Our officers are in our community every day keeping us safe, and ensuring that the department has what they need is a critical priority in our budget.
On the public works side, we are adding an additional crew to assist with leaf and brush collection and snow removal, and we are expanding our summer surge staffing from 2 to 4 employees to help improve township services during the labor-intensive summer season.
In addition, we are investing in new, more efficient equipment, including a new single-operator leaf vacuum truck, which enables one public works employee to operate as effectively as a full crew.
Long-term strategic planning
In terms of our long-term financial strategy, we have paid off more debt than we have taken on each year over the last decade, which has allowed us to reduce our debt service payments from from 25% of the tax levy to 22%. This means that more tax dollars are used for municipal services and tax reductions rather than paying interest on borrowed money.
Taking this further, we will pay off an additional $5 million in debt on Pennytown (which is over 10% of the current debt), when we receive BeOne’s contribution to our affordable housing fund this summer, finally solving a years-long ongoing burden on township taxpayers.
New sources of revenue
The township also has secured significant outside grant funding to expand Township facilities and amenities, including $600,000 for a new dispatch center, $500,000 for a new bandshell at Woolsey Park, and $2.56 million for our proposed new senior and community center. We also have hired a new grant-writing firm, a decision which has paid dividends by securing almost $100,000 in new grants already.
In addition to grant funding, other revenue sources the township has secured include shared services, cannabis, and PILOT revenue. On shared services, the Township has received over $1.3 million of benefits from these agreements, including shared health services with the boroughs, policing with Hopewell Borough, and road paving with Mercer County. The township also will receive $70,000 in cannabis revenue and over $3 million in PILOT revenues this year, the latter of which will continue to grow significantly year over year.
Supporting our schools: $16.1 million commitment
Finally, the township has committed to contribute up to $16.1 million to the Hopewell Valley Regional School District to fund improvements at Bear Tavern Elementary School, including an addition that will move students out of the trailers that have been housing classrooms since the 1990s. This contribution is worth approximately $1,475 to each household in the boroughs and over $2,200 for each township household.
This funding can be finalized once Pennington Borough joins Hopewell Borough in withdrawing from the litigation challenging the PILOT that is currently holding things up.
We note that we proactively jointly funded a demographic study with the district after our third round affordable housing plan, which showed that even with the projected growth, district enrollment will not exceed its peak levels of over 4,100 students from 2006, and we are currently in discussions with the district on their future needs to accommodate our new neighbors.
Over the past decade, the township committee has consistently worked to get the best value for every dollar invested by residents. We would like to thank and recognize township CFO, Julie Troutman, business administrator George Snyder and the entire township team for their help on this year’s budget.
Courtney Peters-Manning is mayor of Hopewell Township, which provided this content. Kevin Kuchinski is a township committee member and finance liaison.
Hopewell Parc in Hopewell Township is among a number of housing developments begun in Hopewell in recent years that have affordable housing components.,
