Manasquan Council Adopts 2011 Budget

Manasquan’s borough council adopted a $5.5 million budget Monday with little fanfare.

There were no public comments on the $5,576,047 municipal spending plan, which represents a budget under the state-mandated 2 percent cap on tax levy expenditures, according to council members. The budget will result in a tax increase of approximately $35 for the owner of a home valued at $501,800, the borough’s average. That increase does not include increases in the county or school tax levies.

The tax rate will rise to $0.347 per $100 of assessed real property value, according to Municipal Administrator Joseph DeIorio. That figure amounts to an increase of $0.007 over last year’s rate.

The budget was adopted despite two dissenting votes coming from council members Patricia Connolly and Don Grasso.

“There are still things we could’ve taken out of it,” Grasso said, when asked why he voted against adopting the spending plan. 

Grasso said he would like to have seen certain line items that were not contractually obligated, but still included, in the police budget be eliminated, and he did not agree with the decision for the borough to purchase two new police vehicles – one car and one Ford Escape SUV – instead of just the car.

Councilman Joe Lucas, however, said he supported the budget’s adoption because it is a spending plan that keeps the borough on stable financial footing and addresses problems such as aging police vehicles.

“We worked hard to make it a stable tax rate,” Lucas said. “There was a slight increase, based on the rising prices of certain things, but I feel that the mayor and council worked extremely hard to keep the budget relatively stable, and under the cap.”