file photo Boyd Loving Village Hall
Ridgewood council members, school board trustees talk taxes
APRIL 10, 2014 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 2014, 2:46 PM
BY LAURA HERZOG
STAFF WRITER
After receiving a short presentation on next year’s preliminary school budget, members of the Village Council questioned the Board of Education (BOE) on Monday about “efficiencies” and expressed an interest in more collaboration to potentially save taxpayers money.
District officials, meanwhile, highlighted the high performance level of Ridgewood’s schools and several already-existing fiscal efficiencies, while noting that Ridgewood’s school district receives relatively little state aid in comparison to poorer districts.
The two elected bodies have collaborated in several ways in the past year. In September, the council confirmed that the district owned Heermance Place and could therefore reserve it for Ridgewood High School faculty parking. In February, the council extended a smoking ban in village parks to sidewalks outside of BOE properties (including fields and schools). Now, the council is also discussing the potential of allocating the district a police officer specifically entrusted to the schools, known as a school resource officer, or SRO.
After Monday’s budget presentation in the BOE building, some council members, all of whom but Councilman Tom Riche were present, suggested there may be future ways to increase the district’s efficiency. Last year, the council managed to present taxpayers with a flat budget increase, and is working on doing the same this year. Ridgewood’s school budget for next year, which accounts for about two thirds of residents’ property taxes, includes a 1.908 percent local tax levy increase.
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/education/ridgewood-council-members-school-board-trustees-talk-taxes-1.898582#sthash.Dfi1OmS6.dpuf
0 % is not the way to go.
I understand that the new Village Manager publicly stated that 0 percent makes no cents.
yep it’s a joke to go that way. it don’t work. it looks nice but down the road a few years bang , it will blow up right in front of you.
But it looks good on my website.
Wonder if they are looking at ways to cut property taxes ? Paramus just cut taxes, so did Princeton last year. Seems like property taxes only went up when home prices were rising. Why aren’t they going down now that assessed home prices have declined every year since 2007 ?
the b o e is 77 % of my bill, stop going after the d p w all the time, I know it looks good in the press, but all it herts is the services. we do have a paid full time fire dept, how do other big towns do it with all volunteer .the pd and fire dept, have very big over time spending. we have cops making more then the village manager.
The BOE is 66% of our property taxes, but I agree #6. The DPW workers are heroic with the cuts they’ve had to deal with. Meanwhile, our PD requests a 7% annual increase in their budget for 2014 like it’s nothing. What budget items have been slashed since 2009 ? Public works (-7% from $2.64=> $2.46mn), parks & rec (-38% from $2.23=> $1.38mn), solid waste (-5% from $2.2=> $2.1mn), and recycling (-3% from $706K=> $682K). All of these cuts have been made to pay for pensions, healthcare and public safety, NOT to improve the quality of services to residents.
Why do you always want to raise property taxes #1 and #3 ? Please explain to us what’s in it for you ? As many on this blog have shown, all of the increase in the Village portion of our property taxes in the last 5 years has gone to pay for wages, pensions & healthcare, while we’ve cut the budgets for parks & rec (incl shade trees), public works, and solid waste (garbage, leaves, etc). So those tax increases haven’t gone to pay for improved services for residents, just for fixed cost increases. Why do you think that’s a good thing, please tell us ?
#8 try reading this and educate yourself about the Pension System history……
NJ.com Opinion: N.J. must honor its pension promise to state workers!
Copy and Paste the link below in your browser to read the entire story.
https://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/04/opinion_nj_must_honor_its_pension_promise_to_state_workers.html
So what you are saying is that the Village owes you money for your pension, which is based off municipal wage growth & longetivity bonuses well in excess of both the 3% annual private sector wage and 2.4% annual average CPI based inflation growth for the past 15 years. So you admit that you want property taxes to go up to pay for increased contributions to your pension. Okay, thanks for being honest. What about healthcare and accumulated sick leave ? Should taxes go up to pay for those, too ?
#10 said……So what you are saying is that the Village owes you money for your pension…..WAY WRONG STATEMENT #10The Village owes me nothing not an employee of the town. Clearly you didn’t read the article I suggested you read. If you had you would know that the Governors past and present along with the state legislatures caused the Pension System under funding problem.
The following is a direct quote from that article, try reading and understanding it…..
Since its inception, the pension fund relied on regular contributions by employees and the state. As a result of good investing, a long bull market and regular contributions, the pension fund was fully funded until 1997. In that year, Gov. Christie Whitman decided to stop paying the state’s contribution to the pension plan in order to use the money for other purposes. As a tradeoff, the Legislature passed a law that established pension benefits as a contractual right. According to Mark Magyar of NJSpotlight.com, “That extended the provisions in the United States and New Jersey constitutions prohibiting the impairment of a contract to prevent any reduction in pension benefits for retirees or current employees vested in the pension system. For the next 15 years, five governors paid a total of just $3.4 billion into the system — and $2.2 billion of that was by Corzine.”