The Hidden Truth about Hopatcong 2019 No Tax Increases

Rolling out the new 2019 Tax budget Hopatcong Mayor Mike Francis announced: "As Mayor of the Borough of Hopatcong, I am pleased to announce that the 2019 Municipal Budget will have “no increase” to the taxpayers."… “As we move forward, we will continue to tighten our belts, secure alternate revenue streams”

A 2015 report released by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy uncovered that user charges and fees are the sole sources of municipal revenues that have enlarged in recent years. This red flag trend represents a surge in a form of revenue that often has regressive impacts. It is regressive because, people who require more city services wind up paying more fees for those services.

Mayor Francis is promising “disciplined policy that tightens spending” – Hopatcong made changes to its grinder pump ownership policy. Hopatcong reduced its DPW Service of grinder pump repair thereby eliminating inventory parts expenditures associated with this service. Residents will be paying unit price for grinder pump parts from their own private plumber now doing the repair.

The Lincoln Institute seeks to improve quality of life through the effective use, taxation, and stewardship of land’. The Lincoln Institute Fiscally Standardized Cities database measured revenues from 112 cities that included fiscal data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The report compiled categories of user fee charges that included sewer systems.

Per capita sewer fees increased by 16 percent across the 112 cities in the Fiscally Standardized Cities database. The average sewer charge is $221 quarterly. Growing fees are one reason Detroit residents can’t afford their water bills.

In Hopatcong the connection fee to the sewage system (per EDU) is $6,083 and there is a quarterly flat rate of $322.50 that is significantly higher than the average.

George W. McCarthy, president of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy advises that - Two kinds of municipal fees are not just arbitrary, or worse, regressive. Court fees and tax liens are dangerous. Tax liens and foreclosure sales, on the other hand, are dangerous to neighborhoods, since speculators tend to be absentee owners. “Although this practice attracts needed revenue, conveying powerful tax liens leads to unintended consequences that are difficult to manage,” McCarthy writes. “The dominance of tax liens over all other liens gives extraordinary power to those exercising foreclosure. Savvy investors who pay a small share of outstanding arrearages to purchase liens can acquire properties at pennies on the dollar of actual value.”

Hopatcong Borough is a paragon of what happens to neighborhoods under tax liens and foreclosure sales. The new condo developments by the River Styx bridge is a swoop of outstanding arrearages of acquired properties that were further sweetened by our Mayor and council with state grant programs and municipal tax abatements that brought government funded pavers and front yard street lighting that starts and stops in front of their new developments. Hopatcong has the inequity of favored developers who escape construct fees unlike the rest of its borough.

Hopatcong residents are paying hefty fines, fees and permits for their home construction projects, garbage pick up and even their pets. There is innovative deception in the 2019 budget that doesn’t appear on the tax pie charts but has the resident paying more in revenues with hidden fees.