By AUBRIE GEORGE | The Marlton Telegram
The average homeowner will pay about $5.43 more in municipal taxes after Council passed this year’s budget on a 3–1–1 vote.
Before last week’s meeting, township officials went before the local finance board to have $2.6 million in waivers from last year’s budget renewed.
Township Manager Tom Czerniecki said the board scrutinized the township’s budget and the waiver request before approving it without reducing a single penny.
Council had held a public hearing on the budget but did not vote on it until after hearing the board’s decision.
If those waivers were not renewed, there would have to be cuts made under this year’s budget, which could have included about 90 township jobs, township officials said.
This year’s $32.4 million budget is up 1.8 percent over last year. The tax rate is increasing by 1.2 cents, resulting in a $5.43 increase in municipal taxes for taxpayers in the average assessed home.
Over the last 24 months, the township has reduced its staff by the equivalent of 19 full-time workers. Seven of those positions were professional or management positions, six were clerical, five were labor positions, two were part time and seven positions saw a reduction in scheduled hours, Czerniecki said at a previous meeting.
Areas of the budgets that saw reductions this year include a $126,000 decrease in debt service, a $75,000 reduction in landfill fees and a $35,000 decrease in salary and wages in the township manager’s department.
The budget utilizes about $1.6 million in deferred school taxes, bringing the township’s total deferred regional high school taxes to about $14.8 million. The budget also uses 90 percent of the surplus to support the budget, leaving a balance of about $64,000 after this year.
Czerniecki said township had the county’s eighth-lowest tax rate on a per-resident basis at $703 per person versus the county’s average of $887,
See this week’s print edition of The Telegram for the full story.
