All or Nothin' At All

Washington, D.C is not the only place with a budget stalemate. Here in South Orange, we are currently facing our own stalemate, with the Board of Trustees evenly split over the proposed tax increase for this year. Myself, Trustee Gould and Trustee Bauer are advocating for a 0% municipal increase. Trustees David Ford, Levison and Rosner are advocating for a 2% increase.

While I cannot speak for my colleagues, I can certainly share MY opinion.

1. While there is now a 2% "cap" in place for tax increases, I do not think that maximizing increases should be our goal. We have such an enormous tax burden to begin with, every increase on top of that is "real" money and we should do what we can to minimize the increases.
2. We can actually accomplish a 0% increase this year, without ANY additional cuts in services. The most significant source of the revenue is from our recent settlement with our Police and Fire Unions. Over the past 3 years, we have been budgeting "x" for Police/Fire increases. However, until the arbitrator provided their ruling this year, that money has been accruing. The arbitrator's ruling was quite a bit less than had been budgeted, so the "excess" taxes that had been collected over the past 3 years should rightfully be returned to the taxpayers. We can accomplish that and STILL have additional funds in "surplus" to deal with any unexpected events next year.
3. This year Maplewood passed a budget with a 0% increase and it is important that we stay in close parity to them since our towns are so comparable in many ways.
4. Lastly, although we are being told we need a higher increase this year so as to not face a steep increase NEXT year, let me share that we have heard that same argument for each of the past 3 years, as per the following table. Things always look bad for the subsequent year and somehow, we always manage to significantly reduce the looming increase:

Year	Initial Tax Increase Estimate	ACTUAL Tax Increase
2008	13%	6.5%
2009	27%	3.9%
2010	29%	1.94%

Taxes have been spiraling out control for way too long, in South Orange, and throughout New Jersey. The time is finally right to take a stand and hold the line for once.

As always, I'd love to hear what you think.

From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)

As many have heard, earlier this year, the Board of Trustees created a Special Improvement District Advisory Committee. This Committee was formed after several business and property owners came forward to express concerns about the state of the downtown. (I blogged about this last Summer http://trusteegoldberg.blogspot.com/2010/08/dirty-boulevard.html) They provided hundreds of photographs of litter, poor maintenance and unsightly conditions all around the downtown. After discussing a variety of options and realizing the limited financial and human resources available to the Village to address the problem, the idea of creating an Improvement District was raised and the BOT created a committee to study the feasability.

The Special Improvement District Advisory committee, consisting of representatives from Main Street, the Parking Authority, Board of Trustee liaisons and a majority of business/property owners, has been meeting every other week since April. Since that time, the committee has prioritized potential goals for the Improvement District, outlined a potential boundary for the District, created a potential budget and is now ready to share the findings with the business community at large and residents. While all meetings have been open to the public, the committee wanted to hold a special open forum where they could present what they have been discussing and solicit input from the wider community.

The public forum will be held on Wednesday, July 20 at 8pm in the SOPAC loft. All business and property owners are invited to attend. In addition, the committee would like residents to also attend since they also have a vested interest in the success of our downtown. Please mark your calendar and join us.

For further information, you can visit http://www.southorange.org/downtown/or send an email to downtown@southorange.org your comments or questions.