Hightstown Introduces Budget with Flat Tax Rate

The Hightstown Borough Council has unanimously introduced a budget that, for the first time in 20 years, does not raise local property taxes. The proposed budget would technically lower the municipal tax rate about 1 percent, keeping it at 87.6 cents per $100 of assessed home valuation.

“I’m happy to say that for the first time in a long time, at least as far as I can remember, we have a budget with a flat tax rate,” said Chief Financial Officer George Lang at the Borough Council’s Monday meeting.

If the budget is adopted as introduced, the owner of a home valued at the borough average of $269,637 would pay $2,337 for the year, actually about $25 less than in 2010. Overall, it would raise a total of $4.3 million from taxes, down 0.03 percent from last year, for a budget of about $6.3 million, down just over half a percent from 2010.

Lang said this was possible in part due to reductions in staffing, including changing some positions to part-time, and a switch to the state health benefits plan for borough employees, a set of changes which he said “gives us a lot of flexibility.”

“We’re able to maintain our tax rate, use a little more of our surplus… we have more surplus than we did last year,” he continued. “What this does is it sets us up for even next year, where we should be able to look to remain relatively stable in the tax rate, because we’re not going crazy this year.”

It also sets a good “tone” for future budgets, he added.

The public hearing and vote for final adoption will be held at the council’s May 2 meeting. Lang said that would give the council time to examine the budget in detail ahead of the final vote.

Overall, Lang said the borough’s budgetary future is relatively bright.

“We’re in a much better situation than we have been in the past,” he said.

For more on the proposed budget, click "View Gallery" on the image at the top of this article.

This article was updated at 1:03 p.m. Friday to reflect that it has been 20 years since a borough budget did not raise taxes.