Englishtown budget calls for stable municipal tax
BY MARK ROSMAN
Staff Writer

ENGLISHTOWN - A public hearing has been scheduled for 7:30 p.m. tonight (May 23) at Borough Hall, Main Street, on the $2 million municipal budget the Borough Council has proposed for 2007.

The budget was introduced on April 25.

The amount to be raised by taxation this year will be $799,236, according to information provided by Borough Admin-istrator and Chief Financial Officer Laurie Finger.

The municipal tax rate for 2007 will remain at 78.5 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, she said. That means the owner of a home assessed at the borough average of $133,300 will continue to pay $1,044 in municipal taxes, the same as in 2006. The owner of a home assessed at $200,000 will continue to pay $1,570 in municipal taxes.

Officials are anticipating using $595,000 in surplus funds to offset costs in the 2007 budget.

The borough's budget in 2006 totaled $1,936,084 and the amount raised by taxation was $763,967. The municipal tax rate increased from 72.5 cents in 2005 to 78.5 cents in 2006. There is no increase in the tax rate from 2006 to 2007, Finger said.

Total spending is up $79,971 from 2006 to 2007. One item driving that increase is the borough's payments to two public employee pension accounts. In 2007 Englishtown will pay $13,000 to the Public Employees Retirement System, an increase of $5,300 from the $7,700 that was paid in 2006.

The borough will pay $50,100 to the Police and Fire Retirement System in 2007, an increase of $20,600 from the $29,500 that was paid to that account in 2006, according to Finger.

The total increase for pension payments is $25,900.

"Each department did its best to keep costs down to the bare minimum for 2007," Finger said. "We wanted to have no increase in the tax rate."

The borough will be reducing the size of the Department of Public Works from four full-time employees to three full-time employees this year, the administrator said. She said officials are hoping that the reduction in force will not lead to a reduction in services.

No new services are being planned by the borough and no new municipal employees will be hired, she said.

In another move aimed at cutting costs, the council on May 9 adopted an ordinance requesting the state to take over the duties of Englishtown's construction code department.

"We don't generate income from the construction department and in recent years the expenses for that department were greater than the revenues generated," Finger said. "We won't know if the state will accept our request for 120 days."

The duties of the construction code department include inspecting new construction, inspecting renovations to existing homes and issuing certificates of occupancy, she said. If the state takes over those duties, homeowners and builders will pay their fees directly to the state and the state will contract someone to do the work that was previously provided by the borough, Finger explained.

In related news, Finger said the council has hired Certified Valuations Inc., of Randolph, to conduct a complete revaluation of all property in the borough. Englishtown was directed to undertake the revaluation by the Monmouth County Board of Taxation, she said, noting it has been more than a decade since the town's last revaluation was conducted.

Inspections of all properties in the borough will be made this year to become effective in the 2008 budget year, Finger said.