Ringwood adopts 2007 budget

Thursday, September 20, 2007
By JAN BARRY
STAFF WRITER

RINGWOOD -- Warned that state finance officials have lost patience, a sharply divided Borough Council has finally adopted the 2007 municipal budget.

It sets an $8.3 million tax levy for municipal services, up 9 percent, or $750,000, over last year.

This will cost the owner of an average home, assessed at $180,000, an extra $147.

But the tax increase really amounts to taxpayers' ponying up money to cover some costs while the borough awaits outside revenues that will pay for them. Borough Administrator Ken Hetrick said the bulk of the tax increase is to cover additional Upper Ringwood Superfund and sinkhole costs that are to be reimbursed by insurance companies and state grants that have been slowly dribbling in.

After months of debate, council members on Tuesday still could not agree on where to make any major cuts and did not vote to make any changes in the $14.6 million budget. The 4-3 vote on the budget fell along the same lines that have split the council all year on fiscal issues:

Mayor Joanne Atlas, a Democrat, and Republican council members Donna Anderson, William Marsala and Linda Schaefer voted to adopt. Democratic council members Thomas Mac Allen, William O'Hearn and Wenke Taule voted no.

The three Democrats, who are running for reelection, pressed all year for deep cuts, including potential layoffs. Atlas, who is not seeking reelection, provided the swing vote, having sided with the Republicans on overall budget votes but disagreeing with some of their proposals.

Prior to the vote, a stern message from the state Department of Community Affairs was passed on to the council by Borough Auditor Charles Ferraioli.

"If we don't adopt a budget tonight, we are going to have an unfriendly DCA," he said.

He hardly needed to remind the council that the state agency has provided Ringwood with more than $1 million in grants and extra aid in the past two years to help cover costs of dealing with the Superfund cleanup and mine area sinkhole issues.

Hetrick told the council this month that $102,400 needed to be added to the budget to cover costs of state-mandated testing for sinkholes. State officials, he said, have given no indication when they might provide a grant to cover that expense.

Noting the budget is up only 2.3 percent, Hetrick said Tuesday, "We don't have a spending problem. We have a revenue problem. ... We just have a temporary cash-flow problem."

For instance, he said, state officials just released $165,000 to reimburse Ringwood for emergency housing costs for residents relocated from two homes where sinkholes were found last year. But that money arrived too late to be counted in the 2007 budget, he said, and will go into surplus for next year.

E-mail: barry@northjersey.com

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