Municipal Budget Calls for $65 Tax Hike on Average Assessed Home

The Wyckoff governing body introduced a $17,038,060 budget on Friday that represents a tax increase of 3.46 percent. If adopted, the average Wyckoff homeowner would see a property tax increase of $65.24 on the average assessed home of $810,600.

The primary increases are for “uncontrollable” State mandated costs such as a 16 percent increase in police pensions, a 23 percent increase for public employee pensions and a 7.5 percent increase for employee health care costs. Over 90 percent of the total budget increase is a result of mandated costs.

In preparing the budget the township committee made note that State aid for 2011 will be unchanged from 2010, but the level of 2010 aid was dramatically cut by the State. “In 2010 the Township suffered the largest single percentage decrease in State collected municipal taxes of any of Bergen County’s 70 municipalities; 25.5 percent, or $373,363… and a total cut in State aid of $594,911 since 2006,” Township Administrator Bob Shannon wrote in a release announcing the budget.

Township Committeeman Brian Scanlan told Patch the governing body put together the leanest budget possible given the financial constrictions they were working under.

“The problem that we have, and all towns have, is that the state mandated pension and health care costs are increasing far greater than the 2 percent cap we’re all supposed to be working with,” Scanlan said. “Ninety percent of the total budget increases are expenses that we don’t control.”

 Key among those costs Scanlon said were $124,450 in contractual police salary increases, and $99,480 in employee health care. Those two line items alone represent 58 percent of the total budget increase.

 “If you just take pension expenses, we are spending three times as much on pension expenses as we are on road resurfacing,” Scanlan said. “We went as far as we could without reducing services. We’ve taken it down as far as we can go until state mandated pension and health benefits are under control we’ll, have a similar situation every year.”

Public hearings on the budget are likely to occur within the next four weeks.