The Township Manager's recommended budget for fiscal 2008 is now available for download.

Download "2008 Budget Detail Document and Manager's Recommended Budget"

Township Manager's 2008 Budget Message:

Imagine that tomorrow morning someone knocked on the door of your home to inform you that, effective immediately, your household was not allowed to spend in 2008 more than 3 1/2% more than what you spent in 2007 – and this despite the fact that your gasoline and heating costs are up over 30%, electricity up over 20%, food costs up over 15%, insurance costs up over 10%, mortgage costs up, etc. Also, even if you received a bonus or salary increase at work, or had savings you could dip into, it didn’t matter – you must still keep your spending at no more than 3 1/2% above the previous year.

This is the situation that Montclair – and all New Jersey municipalities – find themselves in these days due to mandatory state budget and tax caps. We state this not to complain, but in order that people are informed as to the nature of the challenge facing our elected officials in trying to determine a budget for the municipal government. With the budget caps vise tightening more and more each year, the time has come when hard choices have to be made. These choices are forced by state law. The community simply is not going to be able to fund everything that people would like to have funded.

Montclair funds many things through the municipal budget that are discretionary, but that we firmly believe help make our community desirable, vibrant, attractive, and even more valuable economically, things we feel help make Montclair a special place to live with a strong sense of community. These include:

• Affordable housing programs

• Early childhood education

• Many arts and cultural programs

• Community events with broad appeal, like First Night, Fourth of July festivities, senior programs and many recreation programs

• An ice arena and three community swimming pools, while other similar towns might have one pool and no arena, not to mention substantial parklands and greenspaces In short, we fund things which many other municipalities do not in order to help maintain and preserve community life and community values in Montclair.

The great challenge facing Township Council and myself is to try to find the right balance between core mission operations like: 1) public safety, solid waste removal, and maintaining the sewer system; 2) discretionary programs; and, 3) everyone’s desire to keep taxes down. In putting together the amended Manager’s recommended budget, I have tried to create a starting point for the discussion and philosophical consideration of Montclair’s municipal budget.

Some of the measures I have included are:

• Elimination of the position of project manager from the Township Manager’s Office.

• Privatizing the operation of the Clary Anderson Arena, while maintaining ownership by the community. We believe that organizations specializing in this line of work can help us save money and perhaps even earn some money, while helping the arena better serve the community.

• Effective July 1, termination of funding to outside groups funded by the Township, such as the Montclair Arts Council, Montclair Economic Development Corporation, Montclair Early Childhood Corporation, Montclair Volunteer Ambulance Unit, Conversations on Race, Summer Youth Employment program, Presby Iris Gardens, and First Night. This would be effective July 1, except for those organizations or programs which have not yet received any funding from the Township, in which case it would be effective for the whole year.

• A one year moratorium on the purchase of new police cars. Our fleet is in pretty good shape right now and we will try to make it through 2008 without purchasing new vehicles.

• Extend the life of our Fire Department employment and promotional lists for one more year. Being a non-Civil Service town, it is quite costly for us to do our own testing and by stretching the list for an additional year we can save the money for that year.

• A freeze on all professional conferences and career advancement conferences to a limit of one per year. • Removal of affordable housing consulting from the municipal budget and switching it to be paid through developers’ fees.

• Reducing as many other expenses sub-accounts as possible, such as office supplies and routine purchases, and freezing most other sub-accounts unless absolutely necessary to meet a mandated cost.

• A reduction of an additional two positions in the Department of Community Services.

In some cases, as with the Police vehicles, we are pushing off costs for a year, not eliminating them. That is because we do expect this to be our most challenging budget cap year and to have some improvement in the future due to the leveling-off of a number of cost items.

Again, the above is to provide a starting point for our elected officials on the road to a final budget. This is not meant to be the final township budget. Both my office and the entire township staff stand ready to provide all assistance necessary to our elected officials in arriving at a final budget that best serves the community under the challenges we have to face. We have already developed a number of alternatives and will continue to do so. But we feel that the decisions on these things are policy matters requiring direction from Township Council.

For example, one of the proposals we have developed is to establish a shared services agreement with Montclair State University covering the high-level Fire Department services we provide to the university, even though most of it is not located in Montclair. This could also be a vehicle for improving our relationship with the university. We may even want to consider, for example, locating a fire station right on the campus that could serve both the university and the 07043 zip code in a better manner than the antiquated and traffic-congested Valley Road station does now.

In any case, such a shared services agreement could have the potential of allowing us to provide full funding to all of our outside groups. I have already spoken with Dr. Susan Cole, president of Montclair State University, to begin an amicable dialogue on this subject.

We look forward to examining this and other possible alternatives – such as the possible outsourcing of other services – with the Township Council. The municipal budget could not be any more challenging than it is in this day and age and if we all work responsibly together we can and will find a way through these challenges.

Respectfully submitted,