It's Your Town - Newsletter Volume 3, Issue 14- 7/13/11: 2011 Budget Adoption

There was a special Middletown Township Committee meeting on Wednesday, July 13,2011 to adopted the FY2011 Township budget. The Committee held a Public Hearing to amend the municipal budget before adoption, after which the Committee voted to adopt a budget for the 2011 calendar year. You can read all about it in the new edition of It's Your Town newsletter

This was another quick meeting with no comments from the Committee members except for Mayor Fiore, who said he was very proud of the budget produced this year.

To say that there was a handful of residents in attendance is an over statement, if you took out the reporters that were there only less than 10 people showed up. Do you think the 5pm starting time had anything to do with this? Something as important as a budget adoption could have waited until this evening when Middletown holds it regular monthly meeting in the court room.

Included in this budget is a property tax increase of about 3% over the 2010 increase of 13.85%.

It was stated that quarterly tax bills that reflect the new tax rate should be mailed out in about a week or so after the budget adoption, so you can expect your bills anytime now.

You can read this edition of It's Your Town newsletter and see a copy of the 2011 adopted Middletown Budget....Here

Once you read the news letter and take a look at the budget, you'll then be prepared to ask a few questions tonight if you are planning to attend the regular Township meeting at 8pm tonight at Town Hall.

Two things in the budget that quickly stood out to me were interest payments on bond debt, which has increased by nearly $400K over last year and the lack of an adequate surplus of funds built into this years budget. Surplus funds in this years budget have been diminished to $600K , which is extremely low, In years past that number has been as high as $4M. Last years surplus was over $1M and by the end of the FY 2010 it had been exhausted.

By the end of the year will the Township need to borrow money from the 2012 budget to make up for a shortfall as they had had to do at the end of 2009?