The Quest For 2%: West Orange Budget Still Being Hammered Out

WEST ORANGE, NJ — The West Orange Town Council continued to hammer out this year’s municipal budget at their meeting this week with a common goal in mind: keeping a potential tax hike from rising above 2 percent.

Despite a marathon meeting on Tuesday – which included a budget workshop prior to the regular session – the council didn’t take a vote on the proposed spending plan (watch the video below).

The budget will be put up for adoption at an upcoming council meeting, pending approval from the state, officials said.

According to figures presented on Tuesday, the municipal budget was approaching a 2.83 percent increase to the local tax levy – up from a 2.47 percent increase that was floated at earlier meetings.

Part of the increase was due to the council’s recent decision on West Orange’s garbage and recycling contract, which tacked on an additional $240,000 to the budget, president Bill Rutherford said. See Related: West Orange Council Makes Decision On Garbage, Recycling Collection

Council members spent a large portion of the meeting trying to cut additional costs from the spending plan. The new “back of the napkin” tally is a 2.1 percent increase, Rutherford said at the tail end of the meeting.

Councilwoman Tammy Williams said she and her peers have been mindful of last year’s controversial municipal budget, which started with a 16 percent increase before eventually being whittled down to 5.8 percent.

“At the end of the day, this bill is incurred by every last one of our residents and taxpayers, so we just have to be a little more conservative,” Williams said.

However, the clock is still ticking on this year’s spending plan, Councilwoman Michelle Casalino noted earlier in the meeting, pointing out that the town has already issued a third quarter estimated tax bill to local homeowners.

“We’re doing work at the 12th hour, and we have to get a budget passed,” Casalino said.

View the 2024 introduced budget here, and the proposed municipal budget here.

The town previously held budget workshops on June 13 (watch the video here) and June 27 (watch the video here).

Property taxes in New Jersey are mainly made up of three parts: school, municipal and county. Here’s how that played out in West Orange for 2023, according to state data:

• School – 61.4%
• Municipal – 26.7%
• County – 11.9%

In 2023, the average West Orange homeowner paid $15,475 in property taxes on a home assessed at $336,591. Here are the previous four years for comparison:

• 2022 – $14,920 in taxes on a home valued at $336,282
• 2021 – $14,701 in taxes on a home valued at $337,703
• 2020 – $14,484 in taxes on a home valued at $338,106
• 2019 – $14,086 in taxes on a home valued at $338,561

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