“Tiger Team” tells Ridgewood to make tough choices
Friday, January 18, 2013
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER
The Record
RIDGEWOOD — The village has to take severe and immediate action if it is serious about quelling budgetary spending, a report by the volunteer finance committee has recommended.
The report — to be used by the council as it enters budget season — was released this week and is the result of nine months of research and analysis by more than a dozen residents, assembled over the summer at the request of Mayor Paul Aronsohn.
Consisting of lawyers, accountants, financiers and local business owners, the group — nicknamed the Tiger Team — was given 90 days to, in Aronsohn’s words, “fix the village budget and reform village government.”
The team was asked to find ways to cut costs, increase revenues and enhance the central business district. The group was also given the task of identifying “structural fixes to the budget” that would not deplete service levels to taxpayers.
The team discovered in its round-table discussions that municipal taxes had risen by 410 percent since the early 1980s. Property tax rates, the report shows, have risen “by a compound rate of more than 5.6 percent a year since 2001.”
“It became obvious that Ridgewood faces dire financial challenges,” states the report, adding that “material change is required in many areas of village management, operation and culture” in order to stop the bleeding.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/187415311_Panel_tells_Ridgewood_to_make_tough_choices.html
What does the council and mayor and the schools plan on doing if anything at all?
Why is the blog so in love with them. They are unelected and have no solutions to offer. Cut village services – again?
Can’t get out of the contracts with police & fire. Do they want to force a strike when the contracts are up? I would like to see the plan to “cut costs, increase revenues and enhance the central business district”. As a taxpayer I would like to see them cut costs. Why is enhancing the CBD wrapped up in this? Do tiger team members have a real estate interest in the housing developments?
I think that this is a step toward public office for a couple of the members. A way to get their name out there. Are “financiers” financial planners? Selling your company’s products to individual investors hardly makes you a financier.
We must have read different reports. I thought these people came up with some very interesting ideas. A few need to be quantified. But, the potential savings seem big. And, I am sure as the government structure becomes more efficient, more opportunities will be evident. I haven’t heard ANYTHING like this from our “elected” officials or the Village Manager over the last 20 years.
It is obvious that we can’t keep doing what we are doing. So, why not force the Village Council to explore what the group suggests? We have nothing to lose and lots to gain.
i hope that each member of the council embraces the recommendations and takes the time to review the report in detail with the team. there is good information in the report and i would hate to see political posturing get in the way of all five of them getting that information.
How about tax discounts for retirees? On a fixed income this town is unaffordable. I can stay and barely afford the taxes or I can sell my 5 bedroon house to a family. They should do a cost/benefit analysis on that. Four more students in the system or a home with a tax break?
Senior if you voted for Obama you should pay more taxes not less
PJ seems the Tiger Team has been reading this blog for sometime
Just remember that we all become Senior. Not all of us move out of town when our kids graduate.
Just remember if you voted for Obama you get what you deserve
We all (God willing) become seniors. Not everyone wants to stay in Ridgewood (shocking, I know) and not everyone who wants to stay can afford to stay.
If a $10,000 tax break will keep a current resident who wants to be here – then why not? Two more kids in the district will cost more than 20,000. Would a decline in enrollment be a bad thing? Less salaries & benefits, possibly smaller class size.
Has anyone ever surveyed the residents and come up with a financial model? Some seniors may become “snowbirds” and not even stay in Ridgewood year round. We know the impact on the schools, how would it affect village services? Maybe not much but the school savings would be significant.
I graduated rhs in 1976 my mother still lives in ridgewood she still pays full boat school tax 39 yrs later with no other children in the system since me, doesn’t seem does it?.
the team need’s to go after the bord of ed. not the worker’s of the town. they make very little.
It would be interesting to see where the ” tiger” tean lives and how much they’re worth they could probably buy and sell most of the employees they are looking to hurt and don’t belive any rhetoric to the contrary that is exactly what they are trying to do.
The report makes it pretty clear that the village is broke and taxes will continue to go up at an unacceptable rate. It doesn’t strike me that the report is “trying to hurt” village workers, at all. I think the report even states that the employees are not to blame for the agreements between the village and the unions. But, the contract obligations are obviously the biggest expense. And, according to the data shown in the report, some village employee groups are receiving excessive compensation, which has compounded through multiple increases year after year. To ignore this would lead to ineffective solutions. That has been the problem in the past. I am sure the union leadership will fight any change. However, the report claims that starting salaries are higher and the pay schedules and bonuses proposed in the report look pretty attractive (the merit bonuses are up to $15,000 per year). If an employee making $100,000 gets just a $7,500 merit bonus, that is the same as a $7.5% increase for the year…that is more than any contract increase that would ever be approved and it is in the employee’s control. The only employees who may not like the changes are those, who don’t think they will qualify for merit bonuses, which is exactly how the system should work.
I think these suggestions are great. Hopefully, the village council acts quickly to implement them.
To # 14 the village is not broke it has a 98% collected tax levy. I call your attention to the tiger team report where they ( the team ) suggests replacing regular police officers with class 2 specials so that less money goes to the officers and more goes to the town coffers who gets hurt here ? certainly no one other than the police officer. The “team” doen’t explain those costs are not overtime but a seperate contrator rate paid for by the contractor not out of taxpayer coffers. You stated in your post employees are receiving excessive compensation, by whose standards, a self heralded group of resident who have a problem with how much public employees make? The real issue is health care and no one wants to attack the proble at the top. Try regulating how much health care companies can charge, but no it’s easier to come after the working man and reduce his benifits or making him contrbute more out of his compensation.
#15…when a police officer is working traffic control duty (other than PSE&G) I am pretty sure the officer is receiving overtime pay. I think you are referring to the PSE&G service, which is not a part of the officer’s employment agreement with the Village. My understanding is that this is extra compensation, above and beyond the compensation that the officer earns from the Village. Nonetheless, the Village facilitates/manages this opportunity and provides vehicles for it. If PSE&G is paying excessive amounts for this service, who do you thing pays for it? You and me, through our utility bills. Officers are not “entitled” to this opportunity. I believe that, if an officer is not available, PSE&G will secure an officer from another town. Having a lower cost officer to provide this service as part of his/her duties and reduce the fee to PSE&G, or better yet, offset village costs makes sense to me.
As far as healthcare benefit contributions go, the state has already mandated that public employees begin to pay a percentage of their health care benefits that is more aligned with private sector practices. This is long overdue and entirely appropriate/fair.
You are incorect, pseg is no different than fletcher creamer, verizon or any other contractor who hires an officer for traffic. all contractors are billed the same rate and the officers are not paid time and a half. Police officers are ENTITLED by contract and work rules to this employment . Overtime paid at time and one half is paid when the town orders a worker to work for the village and the money is not reimbursed by a contractor. The village makes money off theses contractoer jobs through administrative fees and vehicle rental fees, Once again mis information being passed around . If you dont like the fee that pseg pays the village go buy your power else where, there are programs in place for that. Im sure you would be pleantly surprised at the money raised for the town general fund buy administrative fee’s and vehicle rental fees. If there is no officer available for a job one can be hired from another town often time at higher cost.
With regard to healthcare cost and contribution, the benifits the employees have, were negotiated for in lieu of cash, now decades later when the political climate changes the state legislature by passed the collective bargaining process and force fed the employee’s this system of contribution without any consideration for the money that was passed on for health benifits.
I have been led to believe that a lawsuit or other form of litigation has been filed by a public sector union with respect to this law. Looked at from that perspective it does not look so” entirely appropriate/fair” or for that matter overdue.
Union employees have not “passed” on any compensation. It used to be that public employees accepted lower pay in exchange for job security and good benefits. However, over the years, the contracts have been allowed to escalate pay higher and higher by compounding several different forms of increases. We have reached a point today when salaries for some (not all) employees is dramatically above reasonable levels for the jobs they perform, which leads to pension packages that are far more than were ever intended when the system was originally established AND the employees have retained job security and “gold standard” health benefits, for which they have historically paid about 2-3% of the premium cost.
The system today has evolved (through excellent negotiating leverage in the past on the part of union leadership) into something that was never intended. However, all over the country, the days of arbitration favoring the unions has come to an end, for this very reason. And, it is absolutely appropriate that these contract policies should be reviewed and revised today to bring some sense of reality back to the cost of running municipal government.
#19 Unions most certainly did pass on higher wages for benifits because thats all that was available, and in the days when those health benifits were negotiated for there was no such thing as binding arbitration.( prior to 1978 ). The percieved advatage of the unions in binding arbitration come largely from the hardline stances the towns took with regard to negotiations, Many town commitees came to the table with a chip on their shoulder or seemingly having something to prove, and 19 this goes back more than a decade. This position would leave the arbitrator no choice but to rule for the union. That is not say if the union was unreasonable they would not lose An arbitrator ruled against Paramus pd not 2 many years ago, An arbitrator ruled against Ridgewood back in the 90’s, and Midland park lost also. The benifits employees have were negotiated for and the fact that the political climate has changed does not mean it’s fair or apprpriate to make the employee the scapegoat for poor planning. Nor do these facts legitimize circumventing the collective barganing process. If you want to see arbitration decisions and their fact patterns, they are availalable on the internet