Montclair Budget Fails; Town To Get New Attorney

1. There IS a heaven!

2. Voting for the budget were Mayor Fried, Nick Lewis and Kathryn Weller-Demming.

   Always voting in lockstep, like sheep.

   I applaud the other four for making the correct decision. Now restore the cuts to the library, privatize the trash, end the South Park streetscape and eminent domain pursuit of the police personnel parking lot and start providing better basic services and less frivolous cr@p like community centers, skate parks, bike lockers and Chinese trade. You four did well. Let’s keep the momentum rolling. Maybe see if you can invite a ‘real’ mayor like Mr. Parisi from West Orange to help figure out how he managed a 0% increase to the municipal portion of the budget while Mayor Fried couldn’t figure out how to get the number under double digits. Perhaps too much MSG is clouding your brain Mr. Fried?

3. So Toto, there is some common sense in Montclair!

4. Nothing is going to happen until somebody throws a monkey wrench into the status quo. I hope that’s what just happened. Break that sum’bitch open.

   According to my sources, Cary challenged Fried to a duel. Here is exclusive video footage of the event.

5. Laura Loonie is back. The town is without a budget. All that was wrong is now right.

6. Great! now 0% increase, smart/hard decisions.

   We should loan Mr. Fried to the chinese for an extended foreign assignment.

7. Id like to commend Africk, Baskerville, Murnick and Terry for this vote. Now, don’t knuckle under. Propose specific cuts and a reasonable budget.

8. Perhaps something like this for Montclair and Bloomfield Libraries?

   A private company in Maryland has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country’s fifth-largest library system.

   https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/27libraries.html?src=me&ref=general

9. Walleroo’s 12 Steps to a Balanced Budget:

   1. Declare a state of fiscal emergency;
   2. Commit to a zero percent budget increase for the next 3 years;
   3. Draft a 5 year plan that includes debt refinancing;
   4. Have stiff drink, crack knuckles, take hard look at what this town can afford based on 1-3; repeat as necessary;
   5. Begin renegotiating benefits for teachers, police and firefighters
   6. Cut the Library budget to $1 million, reduce staff.
   7. Farm out trash collection to private firms, sack staff.
   8. Raise pool, parking and other usage fees.
   9. Sack Russell, Harrison and at least 20 more like them
   10. Freeze all discussion of ancillary matters at council meetings (ie, no pet spending programs);
   11. Cut any other non-essential program or service;
   12. Recall Fried

10. wait, this is the 2010 budget? How do you unspend 3/4 of a year’s expenditures? Lemme guess, the only real option is to decide the 4th quarter tax bill.

    What a F’ing joke.

    Sorry folks, municipalities cannot run deficits and the money is already spent, so….

11. Wait, are you saying I shouldn’t uncork the champagne?

12. You need an avatar, ROC. How about this one? Or this?

13. Thinking outside the bottle…let’s donate some $$$ to MSU and let the town use their library! We can close our turn of the century library into retail space or condos! Have you been to our library? They are about 25 years behind! The one or two times I was there I could count the number of people—often the staff out numbered the clients!

14. “If the budget is not passed soon, the town could face penalties from the state”

    How much? When? Why?

    (Oh, why bother?)

15. Walleroo – I’ve got a few more.

    How many people do we have on staff at the Parking Authority or the Sewer Utility? Dissolve them and lay off the staff. These things worked just fine when they were part of the regular township administration.

    How many railroad permit holders live outside of Montclair? Do what Glen Ridge does and charge them double the resident rate for a parking permit.

    Actually start enforcing parking time limits on streets near train stations and bus routes. I live near both and there are plenty of people who park all day on the streets in these areas to take the bus/train and don’t pay a dime. This is insulting to all the residents who pay $50/month to legally have this privilege.

    Up the pool and activity fees and institute pay-to-play in the schools. Yes, there are people who won’t be able to afford the fees, but we always give them scholarships anyway. There has been a huge resistance to this from certain members of the council and our school board because they don’t want to embarass the less fortunate that will need assistance. Ms. Sullivan, the school district business administrator even said ‘we don’t want to be in the business of checking tax returns’. I’m sorry, but we pay you enough (over $150k) to figure stuff like this out.

    Let’s stop dragging our feet on the townwide municipal reassessment. Have we filed our request with the county for this yet? This is where we could have seen the biggest bang for our buck. Burying our heads in the sand over this has been costing us something like $2M/ year in legal fees and lost revenues. It’s shameful that this likely won’t happen until 2012 tax year. Other towns who revalued when we did corrected this problem back in 2009. I don’t want to hear Fried/Weller/Lewis crying about the increases not being their fault and due to lost revenue when it was in our power to fix this. I know it’s not as sexy as a senior center, but fiscal sanity would be a much better legacy to leave the residents of this town.

16. How can they not pass a budget for monies already spent? Hopefully, this means we won’t be looking at another 5.6% next year. “Roo, ROC has a great avatar – don’t you see the crack in the cup with the contents leaking out? Subtle, but very clever.

    This is a joke and unfortunately it’s on us.

17. “Let’s stop dragging our feet on the townwide municipal reassessment.”

    What’s that gator? Didn’t we just have one?

18. Great managers assemble great teams to analyze and solve large problems. The township budget is certainly a large problem.

    Perhaps we could reach north just a bit and see if we can tap some of the expertise that lives on the MSU campus. What a great project for a group of people with expertise in public administration and finance.

    It seems obvious to me that the Township requires expertise that they currently don’t have, haven’t sought or simply ignored. Put the egos away and serve the people who elected you in the absolutely best manner possible.

19. ROC – Sure we did. 4 years ago. And now about 2/3 of those assessments are undefendable. Let’s continue to ignore that. And let’s pass along more 6% tax increases that will have more people appealing – the one thing they can do now to control their tax burden.

    The higher our tax burden goes, the lower our home values get, the more appeals get filed, the more refunds we pay to successful appeallants, the lower our revenue goes, the higher the tax rate goes to make up for it.

    Lather, rinse, repeat and buy a senior center.

20. Oh, Joy. Then when things got to hell in a handbasket all we’ll hear is “we did exactly what the experts told us to do.”

    Personally I don’t think it takes highly technical expertise. Most average citizens manage to balance their inflows with their outflows of money.

    Start by cutting the non-essentials.

    Everybody is too invested in finding some secret method of affording what we cannot afford. It’s a fools errand.

    Start by determining the tax increase (like 0%!) and work backwards. With a fixed and immutable amount of money to spend the priorities will quickly emerge.

21. gator,

    How do you know that the extra amount paid to defend and refund exceeds the amount collected from “overpayment” ?

    Financially we might be better off without another reevaluation.

22. p.s.
    “like $2M/ year in legal fees and lost revenues.” Most of that being in “lost” revenue, correct? Which would be “lost” in a reassessment as well, correct?

23. ROC – Revenue will not be lost in a reassessment, becuase the tax rate will be adjusted to make it revenue neutral- it will just redistribute who is paying the taxes based on a current, fair assessment.

    What this will do is minimize the number of appeals filed, and the number of appeals that succeed, so we are not refunding money to people after the final tax bills are mailed out. Currently I believe we are borrowing money to do much of this for the current year, and then the following year, the overall tax hike is greater because of the overall lower townwide valuation. We will be repeating this cycle for at least 3 years needlessly.

    This is an extremely fiscally prudent thing to do and must be done not only to stop the bleeding, but to ensure that the tax burden stays as equally distributed as possible. There are many folks who have a viable appeal that have not filed who are paying more than they should. More and more people keep jumping on this bandwagon – there were 1,225 people who filed this year.

    This will eventually need to be done. And if we wait any longer, we will have to pay for a more expensive revaluation (with inspections) rather than a reassessment (using the inspection data from 2006). That alone can cost an extra $500k+.

24. That’s what all reassessments are supposed to do gator. We’ve heard that before. In the 2006 reevaluation it was supposed to “redistribute who is paying the taxes based on a current, fair assessment.”

    Was it done poorly in 2006? It would be done better now? Or is it the downturn and high tax rate (neither of which would change) which are driving the high number of appeals?

25. P.S.

    “Revenue will not be lost in a reassessment,”

    And neither will it be gained. If 2 million is “lost” due to refunds the amount is made up in the taxes everyone else pays…

    The only thing we’re out is the cost of defending the appeals. I’m not convinced another reassessment will lower the number of appeals.

26. ROC,

    Gator is correct about the need to reassess. The reason the property values are so out of whack is because of the 30% drop in many of our property values. Not all properties dropped in value equally and it is this disparity that causes such a dramatic increase in the number of appeals. By reassessing all of the properties at their current value, we rebalance the playing field and make it much less likely for each property owner to file a successful appeal. If we don’t, this crazy cycle will continue at two million per year. There is also the issue that the town must then pay for your overpayment to the county as well if you win your appeal. You are correct about a lot of things. You are dead wrong on this one. Now if property values continue to plunge, then we would need to do this again in a few more years. I would hope we are nearing a bottom. Of course, if we keep increasing taxes by 6% as our neighboring towns figure out how to meet the state-mandated caps, then our property values will continue to decrease faster than that of our neighbors.

    Savings should come in around 1.5 million per year. We have already blown somewhere in the range of 3 to 4 million by not reassessing earlier, like so many other towns in Jersey did. But where unique, we have a quirky ‘O’ in our new logo (how much did that cost us?).

27. where should be we are. I suck.

28. I think in cases it was done poorly in 2006 (I consider my own neighborhood to be an example). But I also think that with the tanking of the RE market, not all properties are tanking equally. I am still seeing properties that are selling for quite a bit over assessment, while others are selling for a lot less.

    Reset everyone to 90-95% of true value and a lot of these problems will go away.

29. I just re-read Walleroo’s post and I thought it was worth copying and posting again:

    Walleroo’s 12 Steps to a Balanced Budget:

    1. Declare a state of fiscal emergency;
    2. Commit to a zero percent budget increase for the next 3 years;
    3. Draft a 5 year plan that includes debt refinancing;
    4. Have stiff drink, crack knuckles, take hard look at what this town can afford based on 1-3; repeat as necessary;
    5. Begin renegotiating benefits for teachers, police and firefighters
    6. Cut the Library budget to $1 million, reduce staff.
    7. Farm out trash collection to private firms, sack staff.
    8. Raise pool, parking and other usage fees.
    9. Sack Russell, Harrison and at least 20 more like them
    10. Freeze all discussion of ancillary matters at council meetings (ie, no pet spending programs);
    11. Cut any other non-essential program or service;
    12. Recall Fried

30. The budget is balanced. Thus the 6% tax increase. Municipalities cannot borrow for operating expenses.

    ROC’s 1 step plan for zero tax growth.

    1. Pass a resolution that there will be zero percent budget increase 2011.

31. The one’s that voted “NO” last night are just playing politics. The budget is already 10 months through. The new strategy the NO votes is now spewing should have been raised a year ago. Great to jump on the back of popular opinion but doesn’t show leadership skills. I actually commend the yes votes for admitting, this ’10 budget train left the station, it should have been prepared for last year, it sux, now move on.

    I mean where were the NO votes ideas all along? Arm chair Quarterbacks. Don’t be fooled by their votes they know the real deal, just playing politics to act like people for the people.

32. What??? The “No” votes have always been “No” votes haven’t they? Please refresh my memory and tell me when the 4 members that voted no, retracted their “yes” votes. Aren’t their “no” votes why the budget continues not to pass???

33. I hope you are wrong herb. All of the yes votes said last years near 4% increase was unsustainable and pledged to work on the budget throughout the remainder of the year. Now we are looking at nearly 6% and the yeses spent more time at the Community Center open house than they did on this budget. Don’t forget, they also sold property to contribute to this year’s operating budget as well. I really hope you are wrong.

34. stu, can you explain how the 2010 budget can be cut substantially with 3/4 of the year already gone.

35. You have a point ROC, but I certainly wouldn’t take the council’s word that they’ll do better in 2011. They already said that in 2009 and failed miserably in 2010. Remember their promises of transparency? Remember their lies about an elected school board?

    It would suck, but to affect the 2010 budget, they need to initiate ‘real’ layoffs. Not just 7 part-timers and 6 full-timers. My company shaved 30% of their workforce when our revenue dropped 30%. I still have a job fortunately. I would understand it if I didn’t. Montclair’s aid and revenue is down over 20%. What do these 13 layoffs represent compared to the total municipal budget. It would be nice if someone actually looked at these numbers. Instead, we are spoon fed far-fetched and difficult to implement ideas such as sharing with other towns and smart growth. Want to balance the budget, make the outlays match the income. Sorry you didn’t lay them off earlier in the year when you should have. Now you have to layoff even more than you would have. Can we build a skatepark too?

    One area that stands out like a sore thumb in this budget is the police department budget. They actually have a huge increase over last year’s budget. I know it sucks to cut public safety, but a 5% cut to the police department does not equal a 5% increase in crime. As a matter of fact, their numbers prove that for the past ten years, they have been able to do more about lowering Montclair crime with less and less staff. Why are their budgets going up? It’s contractually guaranteed, most likely do to cr@ppy mediators decisions. But this does not mean that we can’t lay some off. If they don’t negotiate, then keep the budget line even and lay some off to meet the current revenue stream. Instead, we not only pay their contracted increases, but we throw our hands up in the air and hide under the shield of fear. The same tactics that our progressive Democratic leadership uses as fodder against the Republican’s, our progressive democratic leaders are using as an excuse to raise our taxes. Then there is the library funding. The only excuse the library director used to explain our need for over funding was the higher circulation numbers we have compared to our neighboring libraries with lower circulation numbers. What does this have to do with the overstaffing and plethora of services our library offers. How many librarians does it take to check out more books. Perhaps we need more checkout clerks and less librarians?

    There is this stupid belief that Montclair is better than everyone else. It’s probably unique in its progressiveness. But this should not equate to increased spending. Unfortunately, the leaders in this town believe it does.

36. Being ten months into the budget cycle is certainly a major problem. I would agree with other posts that there is little that can be done now to save us from a tax increase. I would, however, accept the increase under the condition that we are guaranteed no tax increases for at least two years. I acknowledge that these are difficult times, but common sense dictates that we must stop pretending the town has an unlimited supply of credit cards.

    We are beyond discussing what cuts should be made to the library budget. We need to shut down the library until we can afford a library. Hiring freezes, salary caps, elimination of longevity pay, etc. would all be steps in the right direction.

    If 58% of our budget is directed to education, then that is where we should find a commensurate set of budget cuts.

37. If I were on the council I’d say no yes vote on 2010’s budget until the 2011 budget is hammered out with zero growth. Let the fines and shutdowns come as they may.

    What’s likely to happen is that the ones who voted against it will bray a bit. Cary will issue a list of 15 things to “be looked in to” (as opposed to actual, on-the-record proposed cuts) and then they’ll all vote for it because of the mysterious fines Cattafi mentions (without explanation).

    We’ll be right back where we started, adrift between the stupid and the gutless…

38. p.s. as the economy worsens I’d be cautious about reducing the police force. But there is much else which could be slaughtered.

39. BTW,

    You can read some in-depth reporting here:

    https://montclair.patch.com/articles/mayor-calls-failure-to-pass-2010-budget-irresponsible-and-argues-it-could-have-serious-repercussions

40. What a bunch of immature babies those three sheep are. Calling them jellyfish would be a compliment. All of a sudden the debt rating matters to Fried. What about when it went up recently due to our never ending increases to capital spending. Didn’t Fried say that the increase would be immaterial and we need not worry about the ticking time bomb so deftly pointed out by our voluntary capital finance committee? Fried, you are a fraud. Over and over again.

41. Went up should be went down (downgraded). The angrier I get, the worse I type.

42. Africk:

    “One of the first suggestions I made, at the beginning of the budget cycle in April, was for the manager to take a look at ALL PROMOTIONS AND HIRES the prior manager made in the last 12 months prior to his departure,”

    translation:

    Somebody do something!

    For goodness sake why does the budget process BEGIN in April? What lunacy is that?

43. The real shame is that they claim to always be waiting for something like numbers on aid from the state, the county tax rate, a waiver, etc. The funny thing about this is, the result is always the same. A tax increase that is miles above the increase or decrease in the cost of living allowance. This is the case during the good times and the bad.

    Town councils think their job is to leave a legacy of spending, especially on capital projects. The concept of balancing budgets without increases is long forgotten.

44. “he real shame is that they claim to always be waiting for something like numbers on aid from the state, the county tax rate, a waiver, etc.”

    Prudent planning would require them to make educated guesses as to revenue, assume one of the worst case scenario’s and plan accordingly. Then if things turn out well you are better set up for the next year.

45. ROC…agreed. Will never happen. We need skateparks, community centers and insulated roofs for our ice skating rinks. If we privatize, then the kids will have to pay more to skate. Better to tax everyone for these necessary services.

46. ROC is right. Nothing should be approved until the 2011 budget is hammered out with a ZERO increase. Was it about 8% two years ago, and 4% last year and now 5.6%? Since the interest is compounded, that’s close to a 20% increase in three years. It’s really swell of the mayor to say this year’s increase is only about $600 per average family, but after that whopping 8% number due to the BOE budget, the newly elected council (remember transparency etc) should have IMMEDIATELY taken a look at making tax increase flat for a couple of years. Instead, they congratulate themselves on 4% increase because it’s such a vast improvement over the previous year. This is just not sustainable.

47. It’s completely sustainable jerseygurl. If you are well enough off to take four years off of work to play Montclair mayor and world environmental savior, it’s completely sustainable. Pathetic.

48. Laura – I really like some of tha avatars people have chosen – but I think yours is the best yet

49. Me too Carl. I just hope it’s tongue-in-cheek. Alcoholism is a terrible disease.

50. The proposal i made was to use some of the $2.6MM that Montclair has already received as a “Sewer Connection” fee. This was totally unanticipated, and in a way it is a “windfall.” This money is NOT for the construction of the new sewer facility for Montclair State. That construction is covered totally by Montclair State.
    —–
    Nancy
    Payroll Solutions

Comments are closed.