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Politics & Government

Fanwood Adopts New Municipal Budget

The amended budget is less than one percent greater than the amount originally introduced.

The wait is over. Fanwood finally has a new municipal budget. 

After a denial of extraordinary aid by the state forced the mayor and council to revise their budget, the council formally adopted a new budget at the regularly scheduled meeting of the mayor and council on Tuesday night. 

The budget, which was approved by a 5-0 vote, will take effect this morning. Council members David Valian, Joan Wheeler, Donna Dolce, Russell Huegel and Kathy Mitchell all voted in favor of the budget; Councilman Anthony Parenti was not in attendance at the meeting. 

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The budget, in the amount of $8,484,587.19, includes a total of $5,591,105.18 to be raised by taxation.  

“The amendments to the budget consisted of principally shifting things within line items of the budget,” said Fred Tomkins, chief financial officer of Fanwood. “Given the fact that we are in September already, we had a pretty good idea of what accounts had available funds and which accounts needed funds, so we shift funds on the operating side of the budget between those accounts, the net effect of which was basically $1,000.” 

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There were some areas of the budget that were cut, such as the capital improvement fund.

“We had put some extra money into the account at the time that we introduced the budget, knowing that we could take money back out of that if we had to, particularly if we didn’t get the extraordinary aid,” Tomkins said. “So we reduced that by $50,000. We also reduced our reserve for uncollected taxes. We have a very high collection rate, although I would prefer not to reduce the reserve for uncollected taxes, I felt that it was the desire of the council to give some relief in the fourth quarter bill to residents of the borough, so we reduced that as well.” 

Tomkins pointed out that the actual budget is only $63,000 more than the 2008 budget, an increase of roughly three quarters of one percent. He noted that the amended budget included several grants that came in since the first of the year that were not included in the original budget. 

From residents' property taxes this year, a total of $16,347,049, or 62 percent, will go to the schools, while $4,366,532.04, or 17 percent, will be paid to the county and $5,591,105, or 21 percent, will go to municipal taxes. The average home should see an increase of $587 in the 2009 taxes. The increase per household is roughly $407, or 69 percent, for the schools, $94, or 16 percent for the county, and $86, or 15 percent, for municipal taxes. 

Tomkins noted that this breakdown, with the majority of the budget being allocated for the schools, is typical of most suburban communities in New Jersey. 

“As the mayor and council, we understand that we are in a recession. We understand that families in Fanwood are struggling,” Mayor Colleen Mahr said. “So it was in the forefront of our minds to make sure that this municipal budget reflected very conservative, prudent, but smart, fiscal planning going into 2009-2010.” Mahr added that the borough incurred no new debt for fiscal year 2009. 

The original version of the budget was introduced on March 31 and the mayor and council held a hearing on the budget at their meeting on July 14. Between those dates the borough applied for extraordinary aid, which was later complicated by the sweeping federal indictments. Department of Community Affairs Commissioner Joe Doria, who would have made the final decision whether to grant aid to Fanwood, was named in the indictments and subsequently resigned, making the entire process just a little more challenging for Fanwood officials.  

The big challenge for Mahr and the council was finding ways to trim a budget that was already very lean. In spite of the difficulties experienced during the planning of this budget, Mahr said that she would not hesitate to apply for extraordinary aid in the future if the borough needed it. 

“I think that if we meet the criteria for the extraordinary aid program and we see that we have any sort of substantial tax increase, that that program is there and it is a form of property tax relief because that money would get awarded to reduce the levy to be collected through tax dollars,” Mahr said. “If it takes us a couple of months than other surrounding communities, I really wouldn’t care.”

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