Hamilton looking at tax hike after cuts aren’t enough
HAMILTON » Mayor Jeff Martin is seeking a local property tax hike.
As Hamiltonians weather an economic recession and coronavirus public health emergency, the freshman mayor on Tuesday revealed he wants to increase the township’s municipal purpose property tax rate by 4.4 cents per $100 of assessed value.
“We do not take this increase lightly,” Martin said Tuesday in a press statement, “especially with the state of today’s economic picture. However, this year’s budget is nearly $500,000 less than 2019’s adopted budget and is $2.3 million less than what was forecasted for the 2020 budget. This means we made cuts everywhere we could without putting our residents’ health and safety at risk.”
Martin, a Democrat who assumed the mayoral reins on Jan. 1, is proposing a $106.8 million budget plan that would raise taxes on residential and commercial property owners in this 40-square-mile township.
The average homeowner who lives in a property valued at $225,000 would pay approximately $100 more in annual municipal purpose property taxation compared with 2019, according to the mayor’s administration.
Bianca Jerez, Martin’s chief of staff, issued a news release Tuesday describing the proposed hike as a local tax increase of $8.33 per month.
Martin has no plan for layoffs but is subjecting some of the township’s municipal employees to several days of unpaid furlough absence, he said in an interview with The Trentonian.
In crafting his 2020 budget plan, Martin is proposing a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts to produce a balanced ledger at a time when Hamilton expects to collect lower revenues.
“Hamilton anticipates revenue losses ranging from $300,000 loss in Municipal Court fees, $450,000 in bank interest income, $25,000 loss on golf center revenue, and others totaling $1.85 million as a result of the pandemic,” the administration said in Tuesday’s news release.
A former councilman, Martin previously served as the legislative Hamilton Council president in 2019. He supported the township’s 2019 adopted budget that reduced the municipal purpose tax rate by 1.25 percent.
The 2019 adopted budget called for approximately $107.3 million in appropriations and directly corresponded with the municipal government ending 2019 with about $6.1 million in surplus.
Hamilton Township ended 2018 with about $9.2 million in surplus, but this rainy-day fund dwindled as Hamilton Council relied upon it to help realize the 2019 tax cut strongly recommended by former Republican Mayor Kelly Yaede.
With the township now finding itself in a worse financial position, Martin is looking at furloughs, overtime reductions and 0 percent pay raises for the township’s workforce to help offset an $8 million budget gap, his administration announced.
Hamilton Council on Tuesday voted 5-0 to introduce Martin’s 2020 budget proposal for consideration.
“This was a very challenging budget to put together this year for a lot of reasons,” Kathryn Monzo, Hamilton’s newly appointed business administrator and interim chief financial officer, said at Tuesday’s town council meeting. “Our hope is that budget hole will be filled and repaired with this budget year.”
With a member of the public asking questions during Tuesday’s teleconference meeting, Monzo said the administration has “addressed the budget hole” with the 2020 budget proposal and “made reductions in costs and expenses to address the loss of revenue we’ve had because of COVID.”
However, “We can’t guarantee that we are going to be on strong standing for next year,” Monzo added, saying there are too many fiscal unknowns for the township to make any reliable projections for the future at this time.
Town Council will review Martin’s budget proposal over the next few weeks. The governing body may tweak the budget with amendments on taxes or spending before adopting it this summer.
“I look forward to diving into the budget,” Councilman
Anthony Carabelli Jr. said. “As strange as that may sound, I do enjoy this process.”
Council is scheduled to begin a series of 2020 budget workshops beginning 6:30 p.m. Wednesday. The public will be permitted to access those meetings via teleconference.