Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Transition Year Actions Up Tonight

Actions taken at tonight's special meeting will launch a return to a calendar year for the city budget.

The city used a calendar year until it took advantage of a scheme offered by Gov. Jim Florio in the early 1990s to shift to a fiscal year beginning July 1. As I recall, the deal included a one-time opportunity to use bonds for operating costs (feel free to correct or amplify this explanation). Since then, the city has been out of sync with the calendar year, as the first two quarters of the city tax year are the last two quarters of the calendar year.

The meeting is 8 p.m. in City Hall Library, 515 Watchung Ave.

The change was supposed to be among topics at last week's "community forum," but I did not hear any explanation that night. I hope somebody will explain it tonight.

The city took the option of deferring pension payments in a previous budget year, to be paid back over 15 years starting in 2012. What effect will that have on the six-month transition year?

Fortunately, the city at long last has a chief finance officer after three years without one. CFO Ron Zilinski may be able to answer such questions if he attends tonight's meeting.

I hope members of the Citizens Budget Advisory Committee will be able to attend the meeting as well, even if they have no role in the six-month transition year budget process. The committee has studied the budget and made recommendations for a couple of years now, so has some continuity of perspective on the city's financial condition. Given some of the flaws in the administration's approach to spending money (think WBLS), citizen observers have a valuable role of advocacy for better management.

The governing body will hold its agenda session this month on July 11 and the regular meeting will be on July 18. Contracts for services such as videography have expired. The city is paying $100 per hour to have meetings and events taped for airing on local television channels. For example, the community forum that ran over its two-hour advertised time ran up a $350 tab for videography. How will the council deal with various contracts for the six-month transition year?

Fiscal matters can seem dreary to the average person. Nearly half of Plainfield's households are renters, which puts them at one remove from the property tax issues, as they do not see the tax bills. Still, as long as property taxes are the bedrock of operating municipal government, it's good to pay attention to decisions being made at the local level on how to use the money. Now that the city finally has a CFO as required by the state, perhaps we will get more insight into the budget process.

--Bernice

2 comments:

  1. Hi Bernice, Your comment "Nearly half of Plainfield's households are renters, which puts them at one remove from the property tax issues, " needs to be explained to those who think that if they rent, they are immune to property.

    If you rent, your rent is based on how much your landlord requires to upkeep his property. Therefore, if his property tax increases - so does your rent. So, rent or own, we are all paying property taxes in one form or another.

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  2. As I mentioned, renters don't see the tax bills, so they may not realize how much the landlord is assessed and whether there are big increases. I did not mean to say they are not ultimately impacted, just that they don't see the figures for themselves.

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