The primary speakers were Marc Pfieffer, Department of Community Affairs, Tina Zapichi, Division of Local Government Services.
To wrap everything up in a nutshell, the word was budgets would have to be "introduced" to Trenton by March 31 and that the date Trenton has set for municipalities to adopt their budgets is May 11, 2010.
They were told that no state aid was forthcoming and not to expect any extraordinary aid for snow removal but for those cities could expect extraordinary aid, they would have to get their budgets in on time. Those in attendance were also told that there would be a 4% cap on the tax levies and a 3 1/2% cap on appropriations.
This is actually pretty heavy stuff especially for a town like Middeltown, in a good year Middeltown has never had it's budget ready for introduction before April. Middeltown and other towns always procrastinated and dragged out the process until they heard how much aid was expected from Trenton. Well now I guess they found out and they have less than 30 days to put together a budget.
And to think, Middetown doesn't even have a CFO. How does Mayor Scharfenberger and the Township Administrator Tony Mercantante, plan to submit a budget by March 31st without the expertise of a CFO?
I guess though that residents in Middletown shouldn't worry to much about this, After all the Mayor has been telling everyone that he has a plan for dealing with the expected $7 million shortfall in the Township's budget since the January re-organization day, the only problem is he hasn't shown it to anyone yet!
Why is Mayor Scharfenebrger's new best buddy Gov. Christie, pushing municipalities to present budgets to him before April? My only guess is that the Governor wants to get a handle on how bad things really are before presenting his doomsday budget to the state house in June.
No comments:
Post a Comment