Readers debate long term sustainability on the Village Budget of employee wages, pensions and healthcare
When less than a 100 current employees and retirees consume over 50% of the Village’s annual budget in wages, pensions and healthcare, you have to question whether that’s an appropriate trade-off in a Village with only 25,000 people ? The BoE is similar, why should under 1,000 teachers and administrators (less than 4% of our Village population) consume 65% of our annual property taxes? It’s only going to get worse.
I was able to find a copy of the Village Budget Newsletter for the 2014 budget at the following link.
https://mods.ridgewoodnj.net/pdf/manager/2014BudgetNews.pdf
According to this document, which is provided by our Village Manager, the Village has a combined total annual budget of $46.2 million. Out of the $46.2 Million, the Police Department budget expenses are $9.6 Million (20.78%) and the Fire Department is $8.2 Million (17.5%). Combined, Public Safety amounts to $17.8 Million dollars or 38.529% of the annual budget. I can’t help but wonder why you chose to exclude the Debt Service of $4.8 Million from your calculations. By doing so you create the illusion that the overall costs for Public Safety are higher than they actually are in reality.
If you’d read the Budget Newsletter you would have noticed that, excluding the $4.8mn in debt service which we have to pay as a Village in 2014, police, fire and emergency service wages & benefits consumes $19mn of what’s left of the Village budget, or half of the budget… spent on less than 100 active employees plus retirees. The Village municipal employees and retirees number far more than just public safety employees and retirees, and yet Public safety contractual salary increases represent more than half of total salary increases of $900K+ in 2014, and that doesn’t include unfunded liabilities (future retirement payouts to police & fire) of $7.1M (against a reserve of $479K). We had to lay off 10% of the Village workforce in 2010 just to keep feeding this beast, and that has led to a reduction in Village services for all Villagers. That’s a poor trend for Villagers
