Cranbury Mayor Suggests Other Budget Options; Committee Reaction Is Lukewarm

This year's municipal budget was the main agenda item at Monday’s Cranbury Township Committee meeting, which drew about 20 residents in the large group room at the . The work session, which came two weeks before the official public hearing, featured a slideshow created and presented by Mayor Winthrop Cody on how else the township could lay out next year's finances.

The crux of Mayor Cody’s presentation was two alternate budget suggestions he had crafted, neither of which would require the from 37.5 to 39.5 cents per $100 of assessed home value. Mayor Cody said he preferred his second budget alternative, which, according to his figures, would leave the township with a greater year-end surplus than the budget proposal that has been introduced. The major difference in this plan is that it wouldn’t include an optional bond debt repayment of around $500,000. This bond has a variable interest rate that is now at 1.5 percent but which will change at the end of the summer.

Township Administrator Denise Marabello said that putting off that debt repayment might not be a good plan for Cranbury going forward.

“It’s always prudent to pay down debt whenever you possibly can, especially with future debt coming on that we know [about],” Marabello said. “For instance, the Brainerd Lake Dam is debt we know we’re going to have. Talking with our engineer, it could be anywhere from $1.6 to $2.5 million. That’s debt we’re absolutely going to have within the next 12 months.”

At the end of his presentation, Mayor Cody asked the committee members to select which of the budget options they preferred, but none of them directly responded to this. In a brief back and forth discussion, the mayor directly asked Committeeman David Cook what his thoughts on the alternative plans were.

“I don’t think what I’ve heard this evening addresses the burn rate of the surplus, which would be unsustainable under any of the models that we’ve run through, whether hypothetical or simulations,” Cook said in response. But he did not directly speak about the alternatives or any of the figures referenced in the mayor’s slideshow. Cook ultimately concluded that the original budget was the most “fiscally responsible” for the community.

Mayor Cody offered one final alternative, which would involve going back through the budget line-by-line to find areas that could be cut to avoid the tax increase. The township will receive approximately $320,000 from the introduced two-cent tax hike, which will raise annual municipal taxes $87 for the average Cranbury household.

“If nobody in the committee wants to go through the details and look at what to cut, which I’m hearing that nobody wants to do, I’m not going to be the only one to do it,” the mayor said to resident Richard Kallan, who had asked for clarification on the matter.

Cook also responded and said that the committee had already gone through the details during its three budget meetings this winter, none of which had a public turnout of more than one person.

“If we want to step back for a moment, I know I came in a couple of Saturdays in January and February too. It’s very convenient to come in at the end of a process and say, ‘I don’t like it,’” Cook said.

The majority of the committee has said on numerous occasions that their main concern is the rate at which the township is using its surplus. That fund stands at $4.9 million but will drop to zero by 2016 at Cranbury’s present burn rate, according to data compiled by Committeeman Dan Mulligan. Mayor Cody said he doesn’t think that potential surplus shortfalls in five years should be factored into the 2011 budget.

Resident Dave Mauger told the committee that he trusts their judgment.

“If you go ahead and decide that the right thing to do is raise my taxes, I will trust that that was the right decision,” he said, adding that should things improve in the years to come, the committee should be open to cutting municipal taxes.

During the meeting, Marabello expressed her own thoughts on the proposed tax raise.

“I’m a resident here too; I never want to see a tax increase, but when do you want to see it?” she asked. “Do you want to see it this year? Do you want to see it next year or the year after? Eventually there will have to be a tax increase and I think that’s the bottom line.”

The committee voted four to one to introduce the $10.8 million budget at its Feb. 28 meeting, but the 2011 budget can still be amended prior to its adoption. The official public hearing on the budget will be held March 28 during the Township Committee meeting, again in the Cranbury School's large group room.

This article was updated at 10:38 p.m. Tuesday to reflect the new location of the March 28 meeting.