Beach Councilman Questions Spending, Wants New Budget Drawn Up

POINT PLEASANT BEACH, NJ – Councilman Bob Santanello said during the June 15 council meeting that the 2021 budget for the borough of Point Pleasant Beach was “not based in reality” and announced he planned to speak to state officials and ask them to not approve the current municipal budget.

“I’m going to have to take an unprecedented step as a councilman and contact the state and ask them to reject our budget as not being based in reality and send the finance committee back to the drawing board and come back with a fact-based, realistic budget so people how much their taxes are going to be increased to pay for the things that you are doing,” Santanello said to Point Pleasant Beach’s mayor, Paul Kanitra during the meeting.

Santanello feels that the spending in the borough is out of control, giving the example of $300,000 already being spent for engineering costs when only $225,000 was earmarked in the budgets.

Santanello stated that the money to cover this could be taken from the borough emergency surplus fund, a practice that he doesn’t necessarily believe in.

“The mayor is going to make a comment about how we’re going to make a bunch of money off this, but it doesn’t bring back the money that we’ve taken out of the surplus,” Santanello said.
Mayor Kanitra responded by saying that the borough was going to put the money spent back into the town with various projects, including the restoration of Channel Drive.

“We spent all this money to get $1 million for Channel Drive, and we’re going to take a $7 million-dollar piece of property and turn it into a $50 million-dollar piece of property,” Kanitra responded to Santanello.

Kanitra went on to say that with projects like the Channel Drive one and other improvement projects, the property values in the borough would increase and bring back the taxpayer money to go into the surplus fund.

Santanello said that he had no problem with the projects being done; he feels that the borough should’ve budgeted better and that the taxpayers should know exactly where the taxes are going.

“My concern goes back to the same thing, I’ve got no problem with the governing body wanting to make Point Beach better, but all these things cost a lot of money,” Santanello said.

“If the voters want to pay higher taxes, that’s their choice, but they have a right to know what we’re spending it on and how much we’re spending.”