Borough Holds Hearing On $56.9 Million Budget With Slight Tax Decrease

After a moment of silence for the late Stanley Mitchell, a former Borough employee, and the former Paramus High School graduate Gabrielle Reuveni, a hearing was held to present the $56.9 million Borough budget.

Mayor Richard LaBarbiera stressed the importance of the zero percent increase, adding that through perseverance and "minding the nickels and dimes", the Borough has done a tremendous job in bringing tax payers to a zero percent increase for the second year in a row. 

"This was done with zero layoffs, a slight salary increase, as well as zero reduction in services," said LaBarbiera. "This is at a time when other communities are struggling.

According to Ray Herr, Chief Financial Officer for the Borough, the $56.9 million budget is under the appropriations cap by $ 3.9 million, and under the tax cap levy by $1.2 million.

Surplus used is $600,000, the same as last year. The amount to be raised by taxes is $120,873 less than last year. The Borough assessment is up $23.6 million from last year. 

The council .

Herr credited the building department and tax assessor's office for the Borough's $23 million increase in ratables.

He said when residents put together the decrease in the amount to be raised by taxes, with the increase in ratables, on the average assessed home of approximately $500,000, they can expect about a $10 tax decrease in property taxes on the Borough side, and approximately $5 decrease on the library side.

"So the average assessed home could see a $15 decrease in taxes this year," said Herr. 

Councilman Joseph Lagana, the budget committee chairperson, said when Joseph D'Arco, the current administrator came in 2010, after the Borough was without an administrator for a number of years, he was able to implement procedures that allowed the Borough to "streamline the way things are done".

"Tom Kane, who was interim CFO, brought a lot of experience," said Lagana. "And Joe working in conjunction with Tom, and Evey Johnson, our treasurer, they were able to go through each department and consolidate a lot of things that were strewn all over the map."

One of those items was associated with IT expenses for each department. Rather than having each department submit its own IT expenses, the Borough simply consolidated them by creating an IT budget for the Borough.

According to Council President Michael Rohdieck, getting to a zero percent increase budget in 2011 and 2012 was not easy after the previous administration kept implementing 4 percent increases over a 10 year period.

"It kept on expanding and expanding, and they had no qualms about raising taxes," said Rohdieck. "We came in here with a conservative mindset, and knew the trouble was coming. We did it stricter than we wanted to, and had to make the real hard choices."                

In 2011, the Borough  in taxes from the previous revenue plan but  and two part-time employees, and demoted three others.

Before the budget is passed, the state must review and approve the budget.