City amends 2007 budget, pares $3K
Taxes on average home will rise $330 per year
BY CHRISTINE VARNO
Staff Writer

LONG BRANCH - The City Council adopted an amended municipal spending plan last week that reduces the total amount of money to be raised by taxpayers by $116,000 or 0.2 cents per every $100 of property valuation.

At the May 22 municipal meeting, council voted unanimously 5-0 on resolution 148-07, amending the budget to include roughly $112,000 more in revenues.

"We received $112,529 in additional state aid for municipal property tax assistance," said Long Branch Director of Finance Ronald Mehlhorn after the meeting.

"We had some additional funds," he said, adding, "It reduced taxes."

Mehlhorn explained that due to the additional property tax assistance from the state, the city no longer had to claim the $112,000 in its reserve for tax assistance.

The infusion of funds resulted in a $3,659 reduction in the budget, according to Mehlhorn.

"We are able to save some $3,000 in reserve," Mehlhorn said. "We took money out of the reserve because we did not have to claim for that amount anymore."

The adopted $41,892,044 total budget is $3,659 less than the original introduced budget, according to Mehlhorn.

And the original spending plan's 7-cent tax-rate increase was cut to 6.8 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, Mehlhorn said.

Residents will be asked to raise $26,713,351 in taxes under the adopted spending plan, according to Mehlhorn, who said it is a decrease of $116,188 from the proposed tax levy of $26,829,539 under the original introduced budget.

For the average homeowner in Long Branch, whose home is assessed at $483,650, taxes will be increased by approximately $330 annually.

Several city residents were outraged at the tax increase, citing that the city had touted the ongoing redevelopment as offering property tax relief.

"I don't understand," Kevin Brown, Broadway, said during the public hearing on the budget at the meeting.

"All of this redevelopment, economic redevelopment," he said. "Individual families made sacrifices for the community. Why are we not getting a tax decrease?

"I know it is not just a Long Branch problem," Brown continued, adding, "The whole state is having a problem. Will there be a day we get a reduction?"

Mehlhorn explained that over the course of the past two years, the city has seen a 1-cent tax rate decrease in taxes.

This year's municipal tax rate increase of 6.8 cents averages approximately a 2-cent tax rate increase each year over the course of the past three years, Mehlhorn explained.

"The average homeowner is paying over $6,000 a year in taxes," Mehlhorn said, adding, "which averages to roughly $50 a week for all city services.

"It is tough to complain about [$6,000] on a $500,000 home for all the services," he said.

Bill McLaughlin, of Ocean Avenue, said "It is very sad that in the past few years, the budget only went down 1 cent, and that was an election year.

"Guess we have to have an election every year," he said.

Bill Nordahl, Marine Terrace, said, "The average resident pays an average of a roughly 15 percent tax increase, which is much bigger than the rate of inflation.

"The taxes are going up even worse despite the redevelopment," Nordahl said.

Mayor Adam Schneider said property taxes are a statewide problem, not just a Long Branch problem.

"The entire state has a tax problem," Schneider said. "I think we have done as good of a job as we could in the last 10 to 15 years.

"Have our taxes gone up?" Schneider asked. "Yes."

But he added the redevelopment under way in the city have made Long Branch a better city.

Several residents questioned whether a tax abatement given by the city to the developers of Pier Village played a part in the tax increase.

Under an agreement with the city, each year for five years, Pier Village taxes are increased by 20 percent until 2009, when the development will be paying 100 percent of the taxes on the oceanfront property, City Attorney James Aaron explained.

"There would be a greater tax increase if [the now Pier Village area] hadn't been redeveloped," Aaron said.

Councilman Michael DeStefano explained that even though Pier Village taxes are being phased in, the development is paying more in taxes than the property generated prior to redevelopment.

Rockwell Avenue resident Donna Peterson asked council if she could receive a tax abatement.

"I think it would help," she said. "I am low income. Why doesn't [Pier Village] have to pay regular taxes? Why can't we get a break?"

DeStefano responded, "There is a huge difference in buying a single-family home and investing hundreds of millions of dollars into a development project."

Denise Hoagland, a resident of the Marine Terrace, Ocean Terrace and Seaview Avenue neighborhood known as MTOTSA, where she is fighting to save her home from being taken through eminent domain for another beachfront redevelopment project, quickly responded to DeStefano.

"A difference between middle-class homeowners and a developer is the epitome of the five of you [council members]," Hoagland said.

"On a municipal basis, this is the first major increase in four years," Schneider said. "If we laid off employees, you would save $100 and you would get significantly less in services.

"I am not sitting here and telling you or anyone else that it is a perfect system," he said.