Sussex County To Decrease Budget For 2021

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ - The County of Sussex will be shaving more than $2 million dollars off of the 2021 budget as compared to last year, according to the first reading of the County Budget introduced Wednesday night.

Like the rest of the world, Sussex County faced with pandemic challenges, but those difficulties were exacerbated when Sussex passed over initially for federal funds to fight COVID. But these challenges did not stop the Sussex County Board of County Commissioners from proposing ae 2021 estimated budget is lower than the adopted 2020 budget by approximately $2.2 million or 1.91 percent.

County of Sussex Administrator Greg Poff said the process to prepare for the yearly budget takes about eight months, with every department contributing to the process. Poff said he, Board of County Commissioners Director Dawn Fantasia, Deputy Director Anthony Fasano, the county’s Chief Financial Officer Elke Yetter and Budget Officer Mary Lee Van Hooker, make up the subcommittee that reviews the detailed budget requests, participates in budget hearings and works together on the larger budget document.

Poff said the 2021 budget is estimated at $115,128,984.

Some of the savings realized were due to an increase in shared services, a significant decrease in health insurance costs and a $300,000 refund in solar bonds, which the Commissioners unanimously voted to refinance.

Poff said there is a small increase in the tax levy between 2020 and 2021, from $96 million to $96.9 million, excluding new construction revenue, reflecting a slight increase of $10 per taxpayer.

For each tax dollar, Poff said 22 cents is allocated to the capital budget, 20 cents to public safety, 18 cents to insurance-related costs, 12 cents to public works including roads, 11 cents to education and 10 cents to all other general county operations.

Raymond A. Sarinelli, one of the county’s independent auditors, presented a lookback of 2020 at the workshop on March 11, praising the County for maintaining its financial stability in a very difficult year, which he said is indicated in the fund balance. That balance at the beginning of 2020 was $16,860,000, and at the end was $16,916,000, for a gain of $56,000. Sarinelli called it “pretty tremendous in a year with a shutdown, a pandemic, so many unprecedented things happening.”

“To be able to maintain your financial stability is a great thing and that’s really attributed
to the good planning that’s been done over the years, specifically when it comes to the budget,”
Sarinelli said.

Sarinelli described the 2020 budget and all of the preceding county budgets over the past 15 years, as one that stayed “to the middle of the line,” with revenues not overburdened and expenditures prepared for potential adverse conditions.

At the Commissioners’ regular meeting on March 10, the commissioners adopted a cap bank resolution to take advantage of statutory provisions for cap banking, which Poff said, could be used to address “extraordinary, unanticipated or unexpected budget increases,” including pensions and other expenses.

“This does not mean this board is borrowing 3.5 percent or raising our budget 3.5 percent from the
prior year,” Commissioner Director Dawn Fantasia said.

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