Mayor: Flat Budget Will Be Hard to Come By In '15

On an otherwise celebratory night at Morristown’s town hall, Mayor Tim Dougherty still needed to bring a reality check to his constituents.

The mayor, during his state-of-the-town speech at Tuesday’s reorganization meeting, relented that a fifth straight year of a zero-percent increase in the municipal budget will be hard to come by, morristowngreen.com reported.

A bump in the spending plan may come as a result of rising insurance and pension costs as well as the negotiation of contracts with town police, fire, and town hall staff and supervisors, the report said.

“We’ll work very hard to hold the line. It’s a work in progress,” Dougherty said, according to the report.

Rebecca Feldman was approved to serve as the council president for the second straight year, and Toshiba Foster was tabbed as the governing body’s vice president.