Township Proposes Small Tax Increase in Budget Introduced Tuesday Night

Galloway Township introduced a $24.2 million budget that carries a 1.7¢ tax rate increase, translating to an increase of $17 for every home assessed at $100,000.

The council made the move during its meeting on Tuesday night, March 13.

“This is not a great budget; this is not a good budget,” said Township Manager Arch Liston. “It’s a transitional budget. We’re handcuffed.”

While the township recognizes a need for a long-term plan to fix the budget, it also saw the need to include over $1.2 million worth of deferred Greater Egg Harbor Regional School District taxes.

“Employees have given back over and over again,” Mayor Don Purdy said. “The employees have gone that extra step. In 2006-07, we saw that it was a bad situation, and we kept thinking things would get better. The whole country’s in turmoil, and when you look back at 2006, it’s so long ago. It’s 2012, and it seems like it was just yesterday.”

No one on council was happy with tapping into the school deferment tax, something that is perfectly legal by the standards of the state, but is also seen as “kicking the can down the road.”

“The can’s been kicked off the cliff after this,” Councilman Dennis Kleiner said. “We still have hard decisions to make. There’s no more kicking the can.”

“We’ve already used this once,” Councilman Tom Bassford said. “We can’t do this again and things aren’t getting any better.”

Purdy said the budget was being introduced “as is.” The budget is 1,000 pages long, Purdy said, adding that the general public can get lost in it, and that it should be about 200 pages long. After being introduced at Tuesday’s meeting, the budget is now a public document, although copies of the budget were not available to the public and council didn’t discuss the numbers publicly, both things that were questioned later on by teacher and resident Kevin Krumaker.

"Galloway Council is in the unfortunate position of using the school tax deferral as an instrument to balance the budget,” Krumaker said in an email sent later Tuesday night. “Because the school is on a fiscal (budget) year, and the township is on a calendar (budget) year, there is always six months of collected (school) taxes not yet dispersed to the schools. The state permits municipalities to utilize the deferred portion (of school taxes) for their own budget purposes.

"The reason municipalities don’t like to spend that money normally is because holding six months (of) school taxes in abeyance helps improve municipal cash flow and, when interest rates are high, generates revenue for municipalities. The state does allow the towns to use deferred school tax money, however, because it will be replenished by new tax collections before it is time to turn the money over to the school district. For reasons stated at the meeting, this is not the preferred method for balancing budgets.

“I was disappointed that copies of the proposed budget were not made available to citizens at the meeting. Also, there was an absence of a formal presentation giving citizens a breakdown of budget items including a historical budget breakdown, historical tax revenue breakdown, five-year debt history, historical breakdown of how tax dollars are being spent and a plan for future budgets."

Township workers will be furloughed 12 days this year after being furloughed for parts of 2010 and 2011.

“The township is doing a lot more with a lot less,” Purdy said. “Morale has been up and down for the last two years. We will balance the budget, but it won’t be easy, and I feel it right along with you. We need to have a long-term plan.”