West Windsor Council President Kamal Khanna is anticipating a smoother budget review process for this year compared to years past. Khanna is no longer one of the newer faces on town council, and he sees the changeover as a positive headed into the first of council’s work sessions, scheduled for Friday, March 2, from 12:30 to 5 p.m. at the municipal complex. The township’s department heads will present their monetary needs to the council, and Khanna says that will be a chance for council to quiz them on how they put their budgets together.
On that day Township Business Administrator Bob Hary is expecting the department heads, including Director of Public Works Alex Drummond, to inform the council as to their long-term plans for capital expenditures and how the funds will be used to benefit township operations. But after that the council’s schedule remains uncertain.
“After March 2, we may say we need work sessions every day, every week, every month,” Khanna says, noting that in previous years work sessions have lasted full days at a time and were sometimes held on weekends.
For this year New Jersey has set an earlier April deadline for municipalities to adopt their budgets, leaving a period of 45 days after March 2 for “hammering it out.”
Khanna’s first objective is moving quicker than any previous year that could come to mind. He wants to satisfy the state requirement by introducing the budget first and following with deliberations. He says Linda Geevers is the only member of council not yet ready to move forward and introduce the budget first.
“How can we comment on something if we don’t introduce it?” he asks.
He says going back to change items would make a better alternative. “If during deliberations we find out that we need to change any line item more than 10 percent, then we have to re-introduce the budget and wait for 30 days before we can adopt it,” Khanna said. Khanna is confident there will be minimal holdups this year. He says there’s a marked difference between having attorneys who sit on council with the mindset of taking up countless time to deliberate on
each item compared with a businessman’s perspective: simply getting the task accomplished. He says before, with certain lawyers serving as council members, there were instances “where they would fight, cry, and insult, and then everything would get postponed.”
“In the past it’s been like an open-ended thing and there’s been a lot of roadblocks that came between introducing and adopting a budget. My philosophy is to get us on a track — let’s try to play by the rules and let’s stick to a timetable. Otherwise it’s something where we would have an open-ended discussion and the objective may never be satisfied, like a never-ending game,” he said.
Khanna has worked closely with Business Administrator Hary over the past three months, commending the job done thus far. He says after working with the administration and telling them to put their best foot forward, they have done so by being under the 2 percent cap. He believes council should have an easier time with this year’s budget.
“The budget work has already been done in the last three months, and I don’t think any one of us has the resources to go tell [Police] Chief Pica that he needs only 33 people and not 43, for example. We have to understand the initiative unless we think there needs to be a change in big policies,” Khanna said.
Scrutiny of the township’s finances have most recently come from Councilman Bryan Maher, who has been meeting with Hary on occasional afternoons just ahead of council meetings. Those meetings have mostly covered township expenditures passed in recent resolutions. But on Thursday, February 23, Maher met with Hary at the Department of Public works to take a look at the inventory of vehicles and other capital.
Khanna says recent weeks have provided a good learning experience for Maher as he has approached Hary to find out how and why the township spends. Khanna can relate, having gone through much of the same due diligence when he first joined council.
Khanna says Maher recently inquired whether he can have his own professional contacts and local advisors review the township’s budget along with him. According to Khanna, Maher received a reply that he can in fact do that as the budget became a public document.
Questions on the budget are sure to be raised at council meetings and the work sessions, which are open to the public but will not be broadcast on cable television. Khanna says that last year council had three work sessions before being ready to adopt the budget. To further expedite deliberations, this year council plans to set aside extra time at its meetings on alternate Monday nights to work on the budget.
