The Press of Atlantic City had an article on April 1 and it's no April Fool joke, about an increase in the municipal taxes of 7.3 percent. With a neighboring town having such a large increase, you have to be at least a little bit nervous about what sort of budget we can expect here in Mullica. Will our local officials be able to contain costs more effectively than those in Egg Harbor City? The sizes of the two governments are very similar. Egg Harbor City's administrator, Tom Henshaw, spoke in the Press about EHC's limited ability to impact its tax rate through personnel means. Again, with similar sized governments, how will Mullica handle this year's budget? It remains to be seen how creative our new committee can be. For reference sake, a 7.3 percent increase to Mullica's municipal tax rate would be in the neighborhood of 8 centers per $100 of assessed value. We are already facing an increase of 8.2 cents from the GEHR school district and 3.4 cents from the local school district. While the county increase remains unknown, last year's county tax increase was over 7 cents in arguably a better economic environment. An increase similar to EHC's would have a painful impact to Mullica's residents, particularly those affected by cutbacks in the casino industry. Let's hope that our elected officials can sharpen their pencils and do better than the result in Egg Harbor City. The budget will probably will probably be introduced sometime in the next month.
Saturday, April 03, 2010
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3 comments:
I feel certain that our government officials will keep taxes under control. The schools are another story altogether.
The municipal budget will increase, just like the school's will, to pay for the employees' 4% salary raises on top of their gold-plated health care benefit premium increases.
The fat increases for the regional high school district and county have far outweighed the increases from the local school and the township. In the end, it just looks like one big increase.
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