Politics & Government

Council Approves 'Reasonable' Tax Increase Rather Than Deplete Surplus

Fair Lawn borough council adopted a $46.8 million municipal budget Tuesday that will increase taxes $32 on the average assessed homeowner.

Fair Lawn borough council adopted a $46.8 million municipal budget Tuesday that sacrifices a zero tax increase to build surplus.

The council's Republican majority supported the budget, which raises taxes 1.37 percent — $32.37 on a home assessed at $323,679 (the borough average) — but uses a smaller percentage of surplus than any budget since 2007.

Democrats Lisa Swain and Kurt Peluso opposed the budget, arguing that council could afford to take an additional $400,000 to $500,000 from the borough's remaining $3,541,900 surplus to keep taxes flat for residents.

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"After going through this line by line, I think there’s sufficient cushion in many areas of the budget and that would have allowed us to take a little bit more out of surplus," Swain said. "I know that many of our residents are still looking for jobs, or they’re working part time or they’re on fixed incomes, and I feel that this budget is not consistent with a better fiscal policy for those people."

Deputy Mayor Ed Trawinski urged residents not to be fooled by what he called an "election year gimmick" that would keep taxes flat this year, but would cause them to skyrocket down the road when the surplus is gone.

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"Election years should not be used as gimmicks saying, 'We’re giving you a break,' when we know darn well that if we utilize those gimmicks in the following year you’re going to see outrageous and exorbitant tax increases," he said. "One only needs to look at the tax hikes in the last 20 years to see that that has happened consistently in this borough. Oh, next year it won’t be outrageous. It may be something on the order of 4 to 5 percent, but it’ll still be pretty stiff."

Borough manager Tom Metzler, who is stepping down at the end of the month, weighed in one last time to offer his support for building borough reserves. 

Metzler said he respectfully disagreed with the democrats on council who would rather go to surplus than raise taxes or cut services, and said doing so would have negative long term effects on the borough.

"As the town moves forward, if there are decisions to keep using surplus, using surplus, using suplus until it’s gone when the ramifications of that happening creates a negative effect of the residents of Fair Lawn, I just want to make sure the record clearly stated that, 'Hey listen, there was a manager here that recommended against doing that,'" he said after the meeting. "They can’t say they weren’t told. They can’t say they weren’t provided with the numbers to support those decisions. But again, they’re the elected officials, not me. I’m the professional."

Swain said she believed council could afford to put additional surplus toward tax relief because of a number of recent revenue-generating and/or cost-saving measures it had taken.

"There are areas where we’re now going to be seeing, hopefully, increased revenue, again increasing that cushion," she said. "Some of the things we just voted on tonight — changes in salary structure, our ambulance corps, shared services. There will be retirements [in the police department] — that’s the bad news — but the good news is that we’ll be hiring police officers at a lower salary. We will be getting more in health care contributions."

Metzler replied that he had serious concerns about rising costs in 2014, and gave an impassioned retort to Swain's assertion that the surplus would be sustained, or even increased in the short term, by measures the council had taken.

Among Metzler's stated concerns were the borough's expiring garbage and police contracts, exploding health care costs and additional health care responsibilities that must be borne next year under Obamacare. Expenses could jump by millions of dollars in a worst-case scenario, he said.

"My responsibility as the manager is to make sure that council understands what their full liability could be," Metzler said. "That’s what my problem is. I don’t understand how having been told all this you would want to take the easy way out and just use surplus, as opposed to either cutting something or eliminating a service.

"It’s a philosophical difference," he continued. "And that’s OK, we’re allowed to disagree."

Counting municipal, school and county taxes, the average assessed homeowner in Fair Lawn should expect to pay an estimated $127.85 more this year in property taxes, Metzler said. 

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