Fanwood Mayor Calls Christie's Cuts Assault on Borough, BOE

Fanwood Mayor Colleen Mahr on Friday said that the borough and other municipalities have been "beaten up" by Gov. Chris Christie's state aid cuts and that she's considering holding a community meeting in the coming days to help the public understand the reality with which the borough and Board of Education are faced. 

"We got a 20 percent reduction, close to $200,000, and we were not expecting it," Mahr said of the borough's state aid loss, which was announced late Thursday. "I think people have to understand what's going on. Property taxes are going to increase, not decrease, in the short term, and there's no way of getting around that. Services are going to decline."

The state Department of Community Affairs announced Thursday afternoon that Fanwood would receive $755,288 in aid this year and Scotch Plains would get $2,227,587. Each were cut roughly 20 percent, but Mahr said like the Board of Education, municipalities were misled about where the cuts would come from.

The Fanwood Democratic mayor said the state usually makes reductions to the borough's Consolidated Municipal Property Tax Relief Aid, or CMPTRA, and that they were anticipating about a 15 percent reduction in that, equaling out to about a $10,000 to $15,000 cut. Instead, the state reduced both their CMPTRA aid and their energy tax receipts, reducing the total aid to Fanwood from $949,450 last year to $755,288 this year, a 20.45 percent decrease overall. In 2009, Fanwood received $59,948 in CMPTRA and $889,502 in energy tax receipts. This year, those numbers have dropped to $28,412 and $726,876 respectively.

"There's two pots of money that make up municipal aid, the CMPTRA and the energy receipts, which are supposed to come back to us," Mahr said. "That money is supposed to be dedicated to coming back to municipalities. We never thought we'd see them grab from every pot of money. Technically they're not allowed to."

Mahr said she's not sure how the state is justifying taking funds from the energy tax receipts.

"Nobody has an answer to that in the last 24 hours," she said. "When my CFO called me, I said, 'wait a minute, I didn't think they could touch that,' and he said, 'that's what everybody said. We're not sure.'"

In his budget speech on Tuesday, Gov. Chris Christie announced that he would be reducing municipal aid by $445 million, justifying it by saying: "No longer will we reward cities and towns who irresponsibly spend."

Mahr said as someone closely aligned with the New Jersey Conference of Mayors and who's traveled the state talking to other municipalities, she found the governor's message disingenuous.

"I'm frustrated because I think nobody has to tell mayors on any local level that times are tough," Mahr said. "I can't swallow the characterization that we're out of control and out of touch. That I reject. … What is excessive are pension obligations from the state, the health care costs that industries push down our throats. What is excessive is that the fact that you are tied to a very unfairly balanced collective bargaining process that does not address the ability to pay. Arbitrators don't take into account our ability to pay, they take too much into account what other towns are giving and hold it over our heads."

The mayor went as far as saying that she would be willing to give up all of the borough's municipal aid if the state would take back the pension payments. She also took issue with the fact that the governor isn't reinstating the millionaires tax.

"That's leaving $1 billion at the door, she said. "At the same time he wants to change unemployment payouts. What the governor wants us to do as towns and the Board of Education is go back to every contract and open them back up, even if they're closed or haven't come up yet. I do understand a lot of what the governor is saying, but the fallout over the next year is going to be very significant."

While the state's final budget won't be complete until June, Mahr said she doesn't have great hope that any additional money will come back to the borough.

"If there's truly no money and we're jumping off the cliff like the governor wants us to do with him, I don't believe there's going to be found pots of money to restore a lot of it," she said.

Mahr said she's been in touch with Scotch Plains Mayor Nancy Malool and with the Board of Education. She said she sympathizes with the Board of Education, which found out this week that it would have lose $3.8 million in state aid, ultimately creating a $3.4 million deficit for the school district that they must account for in the next three days. The main concern, Mahr said, is educating the public now about where all these cuts have come from, so that when tax bills do go out, there isn't a sudden outcry.

"At that time it's too late," she said. "People need to educate themselves now because as Trenton goes so does Fanwood, Scotch Plains and the Board of Education, and we are being told what we need to do."