Once again, Town Council and the administration have wheeled out a municipal budget that would make a piece of Swiss cheese look like solid cheddar in comparison. This has rarely been more evident than during the proceedings at the most recent budget hearing at the April 15 Council meeting. Let’s examine a few of the biggest holes.
Exhibit A: During the last several years, the administration has consistently been recommending roughly $150,000 more for fire hydrant services than we have actually been paying the water company for this. What happened this time? They cut the appropriation from $895,000 to $795,000. Where is the extra $50,000 going to be used? Certainly not for servicing more than 50 new public hydrants at $950 each per year, because few if any are in the works for 2013. (The ones at Princeton Terrace on Clarksville Road are all privately maintained, as are many others.)
Exhibit B: In 2012 the anticipated revenue from building permits was $775,000, but we actually realized $1,604,000. Even more extreme examples apply for previous years: in 2011, $775,000 was also anticipated, but $2,103,856 was realized. In 2013 the administration again anticipates only $775,000, which means that we will be overtaxed to make up for the predicted low revenue. The public should realize that these fees are not only for new construction, but also for remodeling and alterations, which are currently very popular.
Exhibit C: The administration’s perennial story is that we need what might be called a Superfund balance of taxpayer money in the bank (approximately $7 million) to maintain our AAA S&P credit rating as well as for emergencies. This is wrong on both counts.
The experience of Westfield, NJ in July, 2012, should squelch the rating myth for good. Please see westfield.patch.com/articles/s-p- lowers-town-of-westfield-s-credit-rating. With a 2010 population of 30,310 and a median inflation-adjusted household income of $127,799, Westfield is not very much different from West Windsor in these respects (2010 figures 27,166 and $137,265, respectively). Various factors caused Westfield’s fund balance to decline from $3.89 million in fiscal 2007 to $198,494 in fiscal 2011, a decrease of 95 percent. Yet even this huge change caused its S&P credit rating to only drop from AAA to AA+.
As Councilman Bryan Maher pointed out during the budget hearing, such a minor effect, even if it happened, would cause an increase of only about 10 basis points (0.10 percent) in West Windsor’s new borrowing rate. As an example, though we didn’t propose it, even if we had dedicated as much as $1 million of our fund balance to tax relief, there is no chance that it would have affected our credit rating at all. And as far as emergencies go, it’s obvious from long experience that even if we had “only” $6 million in the bank, this would be far more than enough to handle any conceivable emergency.
Separately, we are given to understand that the Grover Farmstead may be up for a significant vote during the April 29 Council meeting. Those of us who have spent literally hundreds of unpaid hours working on a way to save this West Windsor icon are sincerely hoping that our efforts will not have been in vain. Despite the serious damage incurred by mismanagement of the property, there are many creative ways to save the house and put it to good use without having it be a net loss to the taxpayers. If you support what we have done, kindly come to this meeting and let Council know.
John A. Church
West Windsor
