County Portion of Residents' Tax Bill to Remain the Same in 2011 Atlantic County Budget

Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson presented the 2011 county budget to the Board of Chosen Freeholders Tuesday afternoon.

The budget is expected to be introduced at the freeholders’ Jan. 25 meeting.

The $190,739,294.23 budget now before the board calls for the county portion of residents' tax bill to remain at the same level as it had been five years ago, at 29.8 cents per $100 of assessed home value, even though the overall budget is up nearly $2 million over last year's budget.

The 2011 budget does not call for any layoffs or furloughs to balance the budget, but  "a caveat is necessary," Levinson said.

That's because the county currently has 14 union contracts that need to be negotiated this year.

"Should the costs of these contracts exceed the 2 percent (cap that has been mandated by the state), furloughs and/or layoffs may be necessary during the course of the year," Levinson said.

Levinson noted that this isn't a course of action his administration wants to take, but will if it needs to. Compiling the 2011 county budget was, as it has been in past years, challenging, he admitted.

"We are still dealing with the impact of the worst recession since the Great Depression,” Levinson said. “Our major industry (casinos) has seen four straight years of declining revenues and unemployment stands at nearly 12 percent."

This isn't the only thing that has had an impact on this year's budget. Levinson also cited the housing market and a 2 percent cap Gov. Chris Christie had imposed on local budgets.

"As a result of the crash in the real estate market, since 2008 Atlantic County's equalized vale has decreased by 13.9 percent, or $8.1 billion,” Levinson said. “Complicating matters further, the state has imposed a stringent 2 percent cap which limits the amount local governments can raise by taxation with few exceptions."

One of those exceptions, Levinson noted, was the county's portion of the pension costs. That increased nearly 20 percent this year to $11 million, he said.

An area that Atlantic County has managed to keep costs down on is the county's debt service. It has remained flat.

"Our policy has been to self fund projects rather than bond finance whenever possible,” Levinson said. “As a result, we are only at 12.5 percent of our total debt capacity."

The county's debt includes nearly $49 million for improvements and expansions made at the Atlantic County Institute of Technology and Atlantic Cape Community College.

Other highlights of the 2011 budget include:

* a 1 percent increase in funding for the Atlantic Cape Community College, Atlantic County Institute of Technology and the Atlantic County Special Services School District.

* slight increases for the county health and library taxes. The public health tax is increasing less than 1.2 hundredths of a cent and the county library tax is increasing less than 1.5 hundredths of a cent.