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Taxes up $50 per household for municipal budget
(by Kathryn A. Burger - April 29, 2008)
There were no surprises last Tuesday when the Park Ridge Mayor and Council presented the municipal budget at a public hearing. As anticipated and previously reported, the owner of a home assessed at the borough average of $505,000 will pay an additional $50 per year for the municipal portion of their property taxes. The total municipal tax bill will be approximately $2,216.
Had it not been for the $200,731 cut in state aid, which is equivalent to $58 per household, taxes would have remained virtually flat. At the hearing and at previous meetings, Mayor Donald Ruschman and council members have pilloried Gov. Jon Corzine for targeting the smallest municipalities in the state in his effort to force consolidation and sharing of services in order to balance the state budget.
The borough, they said, has a long history of shared services including the Tri-Boro Ambulance Service; the Tri-Boro Fuel Depot, a shared fuel supply agreement with the tri-borough towns and the Park Ridge Board of Education; and the pistol range, shared with Montvale and Woodcliff Lake. The borough’s Building Department shares a construction code official with Woodcliff Lake; a plumbing sub-code official with River Vale and Woodcliff Lake; and a fire sub-code official with River Vale.
The total cost to operate the borough is $11,360,358. Of that amount, $7,580,371 will be raised by taxes based on the borough’s total valuation of assessed property of $1,727,777,833. The municipal tax rate is 0.439 percent per $100 of assessed value.
Municipal income, that makes up the other $3,779,987 needed to operate the borough for the 2008 calendar year, comes from a variety of sources, among them $1,280,000 from surplus; $504,267 from state sources including a number of grants, and this year, $77,489 in revenue is expected to be generated from the rent on the post office property, that the borough purchased earlier this year.
Twenty-five percent of the budget - $2,814,368 – is attributable to expenses for Public Safety and Health. Of that total, according to the report provided at the April 22 meeting, it costs $2,243,677 to operate the police department. Insurance and benefits for the borough are $1,875,908, or 17 percent. Disposal services, including garbage collections, trash disposal and payments to the Bergen County Sewer Authority, and recycling costs make up 15 percent of the budget at $1,385,041.
Although the budget was approved, it was not adopted. According to Ann Kilmartin, the borough’s chief financial officer, some technical changes were necessary that do not affect the tax impact. A pubic hearing on the budget amendment will be held at the next council meeting, scheduled for Tuesday. May 13. With its passage, the budget will be officially adopted.
Kathryn A. Burger's e-mail address is burger@northjersey.com.
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