Moorestown Mayor, Deputy Mayor Defend Proposed Tax Increase

MOORESTOWN, NJ — After several contentious budget hearings, Moorestown Council introduced its proposed $26,202,000 budget with a 2.48 percent tax increase Monday night. The public hearing and final vote is set for July 8.

Moorestown Mayor Lisa Petriello and Deputy Mayor Nicole Gillespie submitted the following op-ed concerning their reasons for proposing the budget:

On Monday, June 10, Moorestown Council introduced its 2019 township municipal budget. This budget is the result of many hours of deliberation and hard work on the part of township staff and council, and valuable public input.

We believe that this budget, which council will vote on in a few weeks’ time, is a responsible one that will allow the township to address critical needs, enhance quality-of-life for residents, create a more business-friendly environment, and lay a foundation for growing our future ratable base.

In March, council faced the daunting prospect of a 4.95% increase in the property tax rate, due in part our obligation this year to repay $850,000 as a result of the Moorestown Mall tax settlement (equivalent to 2% of the proposed total increase); contractual obligations relating to salaries and benefits; and sluggish growth in ratables.

Our goals throughout the budget process have been to provide value for every dollar spent, address a backlog of critical needs, and provide valued services while minimizing impact to taxpayers.

As a result, we were able to significantly reduce the impact to taxpayers to $0.414 per $100 of property value, an increase of 1 cent (2.48%) over 2018‘s rate. Overall, the budget represents an increase of only 2.38% over 2018 appropriations.

While we worked diligently for an even more significant decrease, we strongly feel that this is a responsible budget that contains no "fat." It addresses long-neglected issues such as critical upgrades and maintenance to our water, sewer, and road infrastructure.

This will help avoid costly emergency repairs such as water main failures, or damage from repeated stormwater flooding. It also provides a strong foundation to sustain and enhance our Township services such as police, community development, recreation, and public works, while keeping costs low.

Finally, it represents an investment in our future through adequate resourcing for our overstretched departments in order to address backlogs, enforcement of existing codes, and implementation of a software solution that will expedite and streamline our currently inefficient permitting process.

This budget also uses $2.6 million of our surplus to offset the impact to taxpayers, the same amount used in 2018 and one that reasonably can be expected to be regenerated. Deciding the appropriate amount of surplus to use while maintaining healthy reserves was a difficult decision.

While the politically expedient choice may have been to reduce our surplus even further, such actions are not sustainable and would be fiscally irresponsible. Therefore, we have complied with the recommendation of our Chief Financial Officer not to further deplete our reserves.

We strongly believe it is important to protect our town's long-term fiscal health by maintaining a generally-accepted, safe surplus balance that will allow us to finance long-term capital projects at low interest rates and to weather predicted future economic downturns.

We believe this year’s budget represents our commitment to working together moving forward, as responsible stewards of our shared financial health and ensures value for every taxpayer dollar. In January, we promised to bring a new way of working with Moorestown’s residents and business owners, to face our challenges together and accomplish our shared goals.

We are particularly proud of this year‘s budget process, which was conducted with an unprecedented level of transparency. We thank everyone who provided their time and talents to the process. Leading up to the final vote on the budget, we encourage the public to continue to engage in this process, and provide your valuable feedback at council meetings, additional upcoming informal listening sessions, or by emailing us at towncouncil@moorestown.nj.us.

Mayor Lisa Petriello
Deputy Mayor Nicole Gillespie

See related: Moorestown Council Introduces Budget With Tax Increase