The Maplewood Township Committee introduced a $41.5 million 2016 municipal budget with a tax increase of 1.96% — an $82 annual increase for the average homeowner, and under the 2% maximum increase allowed by the state.
The budget includes maintaining two police officers hired last year and will allow for the hiring of two new firefighters, said Mayor Vic DeLuca.
Overall spending is increasing 2.9%, said DeLuca. Cost drivers include a 2% salary raise for township employees, a 14% rise in group health insurance premiums and an 8% increase in the bond principal payments.
Although Maplewood entered the year with an $8.6 million reduction in the net valuation of taxable properties (largely because of a $15 million reduction in the value for Winchester Gardens), new ratables helped to offset the loss, DeLuca said.
The town will use roughly $300,000 from the $1 million net proceeds of the sale of the former Post Office to keep the tax increase down. The balance will be kept in a reserve fund and used in future years.
“On the capital side we are continuing our long standing practice of only incurring 80 percent of the debt we are retiring,” said DeLuca. This year’s capital budget includes the purchase of a new firetruck, jitney and front loader for the Dept. of Public Works. In addition, the town plans improvements to The Woodland, new windows at the Hilton library, body cameras for the police department and road and sewer improvements.
The capital budget also includes a $15,000 appropriation for a design plan for the expansion of the Maplewood Memorial Library.
Open Space Trust Fund monies will go toward improving parks and fields, improvements to the outside of the Hilton library and the Seth Boyden Learning Center. OSTF will also be used to purchase the former church on Burnett Avenue, a deal the township recently closed on.
The budgets for the Maplewood Village Alliance and Springfield Avenue Partnership will be introduced at a public hearing on May 3. The MVA had requested an additional $50,000 on top of its regular budget request to pay for costs associated with the Post House development; the township has said it will give them half that. “I have spoken to [the MVA] and they think they can do a lot with that,” DeLuca said.
Committeewoman India Larrier noted that the town would request that the developer JMF Properties, make up for the additional $25,000.
The TC also voted to introduce an ordinance to allow the governing body to establish a cap bank if it needed to go over the state mandated 2% increase, which Manning said the town did not plan to do.
A hearing on the budget will be held at Town Hall on April 19 at 7:30 p.m.
