April 20th Meeting Summary

On Monday we had an important Council meeting.

We started the meeting with our annual hearing on our budget. We received no comments from the public.

We passed our budget 5-0 after authorizing several significant changes since introduction. Verona's budget is reviewed by the State of New Jersey, and they had some changes which impacted the numbers. The changes involved expenses that could not be allocated outside of the 2% cap on the tax levy. This year, we needed to move the pension costs from "outside" of the cap limit to "inside", causing a reduction of the budget by $155K. In addition, our health department shared service costs also had to be moved "inside" the cap amount, forcing another reduction of $147K. In order then to make our budget, both the health insurance budget and recycling and garbage budget were lowered to make up these reductions.

The result for the taxpayer is a lower tax increase than we expected. The total amount to be raised by taxation (excluding the library) will be $18.5 million. The tax increase will only be 1.19%, or $79 per home.

While this is a huge benefit to taxpayers, as we are all feeling the impact of inflation, this budget will be difficult for the staff to live under. A key part of Verona's strong budgeting at the local level is to ensure that we re-generate surplus, which we then use in the next year. As you will recall from my summary on budget introduction, we decided to use extra surplus this year to help make the tax increase more palpable to the tax payer. Now we cut $277K from the budget. That will make re-generating surplus even more difficult. The staff, which already spends at a very responsible level, will need to keep spending very tight this year. There are continued cost pressures that are not fully in the control of the staff, including our pharmacy benefit costs (which we know will go up significantly on July 1st), oil, gas and electric prices. This all leads for a very tight spending environment to ensure that we come in under budget.

It is my opinion that the Administration also needs to bring to the Council new ideas on expanding revenue, including looking at fees and coming up with new ideas that are revenue generating. These should happen early in the year, so that we can get the benefit of generating more revenue this year. While we have made some adjustments in recent years to some fees (parking, recreation, and construction), there are still some areas where Verona can make adjustments. While the Township will expect an expanded tax base when all of the planned developments come to fruition, that impact will not be for years. I encourage the Administration to think through more ideas on how we can generate additional revenue to offset the high cost of running a municipality.

Moving on to the next big topic, with a vote of 3-2 (Councilwoman Holland and I voted against), the Council approved a PILOT agreement for 885 Bloomfield Avenue. The details of this agreement were explained in my last post which you can find here. I am not in favor of developing this property, so consistent with my previous votes, I did not vote to approve.

We also introduced an re-development plan for 251 1/2 Grove. If you live on Grove or Ann that backs up on this property, you will want to read the re-development plan and attend upcoming Planning Board meetings to learn more about the development of townhomes that will be built there. The Planning Board is where the public should voice questions and concerns. The plan is for 84 three story townhomes, 67 market rate units (30 three bedroom, 37 two bedroom) and 17 affordable units (3 one bedroom, 11 two bedroom and 3 three bedroom). You can find a schedule for the upcoming Planning Board meetings here: https://www.veronanj.org/planningboard. You can find the plans for the development here: https://www.veronanj.org/departments/planningboard/planningboarddocuments

Other actions we took at the meeting of significance:

• We adopted our changes to the pest control ordinance

• We introduced an ordinance to make some changes to our land use boards

• We canceled $1 million in ordinances under our capital fund and $33K in our water and sewer utilities. This means we got money back from projects that came in under budget

• After some debate on the language, we adopted a resolution opposing NJ bill S-1836, which would allow for the building of housing on property for houses of worship without following local zoning laws.

If you have any comments on anything discussed or any matter, I encourage you to email the entire Council here: https://www.veronanj.org/councilcontactform.