Budget Challenges Topic of Breakfast with Deputy Mayor Sapienza

While acknowledging the tough economic crisis municipalities across New Jersey are facing, Verona Deputy Mayor Frank Sapienza and three other officials from area towns discussed how they are managing to keep a lid on their budgets. 

Strategies offered from the mayors of Clifton, Montclair and North Caldwell and the deputy mayor of Verona include creating public-private partnerships, establishing and utilizing volunteers.

The officials spoke at a Thursday morning at Crane's Mill in West Caldwell. The event was sponsored jointly by the League of Women Voters of the Montclair Area and the North Essex Chamber of Commerce with funding provided by PSE&G. 

The meeting was moderated by North Essex Chamber of Commerce President Anthony M. Rainone, who asked each mayor how they were working to save money for their residents.

First to respond was Montclair Mayor Jerry Fried who discussed the private-public partnership forged for the Montclair Public Library. As the town has been forced to "tighten its belt and focus on core, essential services," municipal funding for the library has dropped significantly.

"We had traditionally funded the library over our state requirement at about $4 million, but have had to cut back. To make cuts is horrible," Fried said. 

The Montclair mayor also noted over the past year the town has been forced to "defund" over half a dozen organizations, including the Montclair Arts Council.

The silver lining in the library cuts, however, was the creation of an outdoor library cafe, a public-private partnership in conjunction with local Montclair restaurants.

"This is a real full-service cafe. It will draw people to the library and help local businesses," Fried said.

In order for municipalities to flourish, Fried said, "We need more private-public partnerships."

In addition, the library is utilizing more volunteers for staffing needs and looking to rent out space in the basement of their branch library on Bellvue Avenue.

North Caldwell Mayor Joseph Alessi noted that in addition to cost-cutting measures, municipalities should also look to increase revenues. North Caldwell hopes to accomplish this by bidding out on additional .

Alessi said with the town eligible for two additional licenses, he hopes to obtain a high price for a restaurant in the town's Bloomfield Avenue corridor.

Alessi complimented both town employees and town volunteers for helping to maintain costs. "We are fortunate to have a volunteer fire department. The police department agreed last year not to have an increase in salary. The DPW, which works harder than anybody, only received a 70 cents an hour increase."

In addition to these savings, the town also employs shared services, with the borough engineer, tax assessor and financial officer shared with Essex Fells and the health officer with West Caldwell.

Verona's Deputy Mayor Frank Sapienza also noted his town's increased use of shared services to keep costs down. 

"We have taken a number of intiatives," he said, with the health officer shared with Montclair and a recent agreement made with Roseland for code enforcement and technology.

Like other towns, Sapienza said Verona is looking to keep within Gov. Chris Christie's 2% budget cap, while still paying employees' pensions. 

"We see how the state of New Jersey has not paid into pensions for years. What if municipalities did this to cut costs? The answer is, we can't," he said.

Clifton Mayor James Anzaldi was also critical of the state.

"While many mayors agree with the 2% cap, we wanted the tool kit to go along with it. Unfortunately, the legislature has failed us. They have failed us miserably in not delivering all the parts of the tool kit."

Clifton has managed to obtain savings through attrition in their police and fire departments with higher paid, senior officers retiring to avoid anticipated state changes in their pensions.

Noting that reducing manpower in public safety can create problems, Anzaldi noted Clifton's crime rate has remained low.

Moving forward, Anzaldi also stated municipalities will have to rely more on volunteers. "In the library, recreation and even the fire departments we will have to look at volunteers," he commented, while noting, "the health of the economy is not getting better." 

Other issues the mayors discussed were working with their local Board of Education to obtain savings. Fried noted Montclair is one of the few Type I districts where residents do not vote directly on the school budget and board members are appointed by the mayor.

Fried noted Montclair's BOE has been working since this past summer to keep next year's school budget down. "I am very proud of the work we have done."

Fried did add "New Jersey has a unique form of government. It is extremely inefficient, with so many school districts." As an example, Fried noted that combining the neighboring Glen Ridge school district with Montclair would be "virtually impossible" since Glen Ridge's identity is tied so tightly with its schools, even though this would be more efficient.

Alessi also talked about these inefficiencies, noting North Caldwell belongs to a regional middle school and high school, , with a superintendent, yet each town, North Caldwell, Essex Fells, Fairfield, and Roseland has a separate superintendent for their own K-6 districts. 

Alessi, who took office in January, has met with members of the local Board to try to work out shared services agreements in areas such as purchasing.

Fried did say "New Jersey does do a lot of things right." However, he sometimes feels local officials acts as "sponges, absorbing all this free floating anger" that constituents have. 

Rainone reminded the audience mayors are not "high paid legislators, but people in your community. You can have disagreements with them, but at the end of the day, they are just trying to do what is best."