Moscaritolo and Council Touts Municipal Budget's Low Tax Increase

The Borough of River Edge’s 2013 municipal budget process commenced with earnest in December 2012. We began with a full bipartisan council as well as members of our Citizen’s Budget Committee, made up of Albert Ruhlmann, Kenneth Krautheim and Anthony Barbary.

The governing body, along with the budget committee met on Saturday mornings in open public work session over the past 3 months crafting the budget. This work was supplemented by contributions from our Personnel Sub-Committee and our Finance Sub-Committee. I want to thank everyone for participating in the process. 

For the past few years, the  borough's state aid has remained flat at $1,070,715 while taxpayers have been hit by back-to-back $14 million municipal budgets resulting in hikes of $$371 in 2010, $218 in 2011 and  $117 in 2012. Over the past few years, the borough has had to implement employee pay freezes, furloughs and layoffs to stay within  the 2% cap. 

For 2013, budget requests exceeded our 2012 budget by $1,127,305. This would have represented an 8% increase over last year. At the same time, our revenue remained essentially flat last year.   

Through hard work, research and prudent planning we were able to decrease anticipated spending by $928,324,00. We didn’t use a dull ax, we used a scalpel. 

As a result, the budget increase is 1.4% which is well-within the State-mandated 2% cap. This modest increase will amount to a $77 tax increase for the typical home. This budget is the result of a ton of effort by everyone involved.

The Council and I are proud that this will be the first increase below $100 in several years. The budget cuts back on new hires but does not involve any layoffs or furloughs. At the same time, we will building back up our depleted surplus by $243,807.58  The budget this year reflects newly adopted fiscal and budget  “best practices” policies we have put in place. 

The budget includes such capital projects as, street resurfacing, storm and sewer upgrades, the library roof replacement, a DPW dump truck, computer hardware and software and new borough signs. This year’s budget has recreation improvements and funding for an economic development/business improvement district study. 

The Council and I share the belief that further residential tax relief can only be achieved by attracting economic development to add commercial ratables to our revenue. This will be one of our primary goals for 2013.  

Sandy Moscaritolo, Mayor, 

Thomas Papaleo, Council President

Alphonse Bartelloni, Councilman

Edward Mignone, Councilman

Anthony Cappola, Councilman

Vito Acquafredda, Councilman

Kathleen Murphy, Councilwoman