Evesham Township Council adopts 2015 municipal budget with tax decrease
In early May, the Evesham Township Council introduced the 2015 municipal budget, telling residents with average assessed property values that they would be saving about $15 in municipal property taxes next year.
At council’s June 16 meeting, that proposal became reality when council approved the budget, changing none of the numbers included since the time of its introduction last month.
Homeowners with homes valued at the average assessment of $270,500 should see a $14.73 reduction in municipal taxes.
The total budget equates to about $34.7 million, and according to Evesham Township Manager Tom Czerniecki at the time of the budget’s introduction, that figure approaches $739 spent by the township per resident, which he said is lower than the averages of both New Jersey and Burlington County.
Mayor Randy Brown said he was very proud of the hard work put into the township’s second straight year of property tax reduction, which he said was not as easy task due to rising health-care and pension costs, both which afflicted the state’s budget.
Brown said Evesham was able to succeed where the state did not due to its partnerships with unions in the township’s self-insurance health insurance plan
“When you’re able to pull entities together like we’ve been able to do, and you’re able to share services like we’ve been able to do, it makes property tax reductions easier than others,” Brown said.
Brown said the township also worked hard to avoid raising taxes despite the state allowing up to a 2 percent annual increase, which he said most school districts fully use because they’re not asking hard questions regarding their budgets.
“I see school districts whose health insurances go up from $8 million to $13 million in a five-year period. There’s no work being done to try to help the taxpayer,” Brown said.
Prior to the budget’s official adoption, a public hearing was held, during which the only member of the public to speak was resident Phil Warren, who ran on the Democratic ticket for council last November.
Warren congratulated the township staff for great work on the budget, noting that loan payments and health-care costs were both down, but said he had a few questions.
First, Warren asked about a line in the budget that noted having $405,000 less for public and private revenues than the previous year.
Evesham Township chief financial officer Tom Shanahan said those figures related to grants the township receives throughout the year, and as other levels of government operate on different funding cycles, and to spend that money, the township is allowed to put grants into the budget before receiving them.
Warren also noted the amount of surplus funds went up in the budget by about $965,000 more than the previous year, and wondered if there was any legal policy or rule designating a certain amount of funds as surplus, as opposed to potentially having that money directed toward lowering taxes or some other area.
Czerniecki said the township attempts to anticipate a few budget cycles as best it can and said while mayor and council provided direction, they wanted a flat budget with a modest decrease in tax, and they also wanted to provide stability.
Brown added it was his opinion that if the council was going to continue to increase surplus, it was only going to do so while continuing to reduce property taxes, as in the 2015 budget.
In addition to adopting the budget at the meeting, council also passed a resolution that allowed township staff to conduct its own self-examination of the budget instead of sending to Trenton. Czerniecki said only towns deemed to be in good fiscal standing are allowed to do this.
“It certainly saves us considerable time and money,” Czerniecki said.
