Nutley Board Unveils Town Budget After Reductions

The Nutley Board of Commissioners introduced a preliminary $50 million 2013 Municipal Budget Friday morning after trimming an additional $329,000 from operating expenses and nearly $1 million more from capital improvement projects.

About 57 percent of properties assessed values stayed the same, but 43 percent lost value, so computing any average tax increase is not possible, Commissioner Thomas Evans said.

Evans said the majority of the $629,000 increase in the operating budget came from increases in health care costs, while the second largest increase comes from money set for economic development projects.

The total loss of assessed value was more than $100 million, or nearly 2.5 percent of the $3.41 billion in total property values, Evans said.

“The tax rate is 5.3 cents per $1,000 of assessed value,” Evans said. “Of that, 1.8 percent is the municipal tax portion and 3.5 percent comes from lower assessed property values.”

The introduction and spending cuts were necessary to meet the state-mandated deadline and to take the budget to less than the state-required 2 percent cap on spending increases, according to Evans, director of the Department of Revenue and Finance.

The board is about $100,000 away from its goal of trimming $1 million from the capital improvement budget, Evans said.

He said the commissioners managed spending well, so no additional expenditure is needed to cover the more than $1 million in extra costs from Hurricanes Sandy and Irene, along with the October snowstorm, all of which hit Nutley in 2012.

Evans asked each commissioner to remove any non-essential spending on capital improvement projects, to keep the number at $2.4 to $2.5 million, which keeps the debt service costs stable.

Normally, the capital improvement budget is about $1.3 million, but Evans said that an extra $1 million is being spent in 2013 on road and sidewalk repairs, made necessary by damage from Hurricane Sandy last October.

The decision was also made because of the historically low interest rates, which will allow for a better economy of scale, Evans said.

Mayor Alphonse Petracco said, “We cut our preliminary budget dramatically, and Commissioner Evans is doing a great job of managing the budget process, but we are very concerned about the effects of the municipal, school and county budges on businesses and residents.”

Commissioner Joseph Scarpelli, director of Public Works, said, “Collectively, we worked pretty hard to keep spending down, and the board did a good job getting our individual budgets down.”

“We are very sensitive to the needs to allow for Nutley to maintain the fine services, while we take into account the need of our taxpayers and businesses,” said Commissioner Steve Rogers, director of the Department of Public Affairs.

A reduction of about $50,000 is being made by Commissioner Mauro Tucci, who said the cuts will be tough.

Tucci directs the Department of Parks, Recreation and Public Property.

Last year, the commissioners enacted a $49.2 million 2012 municipal budget that officials said contained a decrease in taxes of approximately $48 for a home assessed at $326,300, the township average at the time.