The municipal governing body is set to vote tonight on an almost $18 million municipal budget, with $13,620,962.78 – almost 76% of that – coming from Roselle Park property taxpayers. This is a $219,229.08 increase over last year’s anticipated tax levy. It also happens to be the lowest average increase for the municipal portion of property taxes since the turn of the century.
The $48.07 increase is on a house assessed at $253,000. This figure is the new average on which property tax increases are based on after a townwide revaluation was conducted in 2015. Before that, the average assessment in Roselle Park was $65,000. This increase includes the municipal portion as well as the state-mandated library funding.
A breakdown of the average municipal increases since 2000 are listed below:
| 2000 | $58.50 |
| 2001 | $74.10 |
| 2002 | $96.20 |
| 2003 | $99.45 |
| 2004 | $57.85 |
| 2005 | $98.15 |
| 2006 | $113.10 |
| 2007 | $120.90 |
| 2008 | $153.40 |
| 2009 | $122.85 |
| 2010 | $100.10 |
| 2011 | $98.80 |
| 2012 | $97.50 |
| 2013 | $86.45 |
| 2014 | $100.10 |
| 2015 | $100.10 |
| 2016 | $93.61 |
| 2017 | $121.44 |
| 2018 | $48.07 |
This increase is only for the municipal and library portions of a property tax bill. Property taxes are made up of five (5) major sections, municipality, school, library, county, and open space. The school board will be voting on its budget next week. Once the county – which will include open space – approved their budget, everything goes to the county tax board which calculates the final budgets and tax rate which then gets calculated eventually into a tax bill.
The state has a 2% cap on the amount that can be raised through property taxes. There are exemptions which are not calculated but in this year’s budget the increase under the state cap was 1.5%. This is different from the cap of 2.5% but on expenses which is independent of revenues.
Significant increases were for health insurance ($83,000) and salaries for the municipal clerk’s office & finance ($27,945) as well as a $45,000 budgeted item for an economic business developer. Salaries and other expenses went up for fire, police, emergency management, and public works. There was a $12,950 decrease in the first aid expenses line – presumably due to the county taking over first responder service for the borough in August of last year. Expenses for the borough prosecutor increased by over 500% to $2,000 although this was a decrease from $15,000 that was paid to the previous borough prosecutor in 2016.
Garbage pick-up increased by 41% or $84,000 for 2018 while recycling went up by $42,500 – almost 13%.
Parks & Playgrounds had a decrease of $6,155 for wages, salaries and other expenses.
Code enforcement had a $22,017 increase in salaries & wages but this was offset on the revenue side by a $74,000 increase in expected revenues for this year of $274,000. Even so, that increase is much less than the increase for fees between 2016 and 2017 which jumped from $65,500 to $200,000.
Other mandated expenses also increased as would be expected along with utility bills for the municipality.
The budget is expected to be voted on at tonight’s municipal meeting which is set to start at 7 p.m. at the Roselle Park Municipal Complex located at 110 East Westfield Avenue.
Copies of the 2018 introduced budget along with that of the 2017 adopted budget are available below:
Download Roselle Park’s 2018 Introduced Municipal Budget
Download Roselle Park’s 2017 Adopted Municipal Budget