The Evesham Township Council unanimously passed the 2014 budget at its June 10 meeting.
The budget totals $33.64 million in appropriations, of which $21.83 million will be raised by taxation.
The $21.83 million number is a decrease from the $21.94 million raised by taxation the previous year.
With the average Evesham home assessed near $271,000, the annual municipal taxes paid by the average homeowner will be about $1,140.
Mayor Randy Brown said he was proud of the budget and the hard work the township employees go through creating budgets and spending tax money appropriately.
“I’m very proud of the budget,” Brown said. “I’m proud of what we did. We had a tax decrease, and it’s the fifth budget that I’ve been a part of now that we’ve either held flat or had a tax decrease. It goes to the hard work of the staff that we have that works diligently every day to spend taxpayer dollars.”
Although Brown characterized the decrease in taxation as only “slight,” he said his belief was any decrease was still a positive outcome.
“Any decrease is a good decrease in New Jersey as we know,” Brown said. “Especially when you have a $33 million budget, any decrease is a good decrease.”
During the public comment portion of the budget adoption, Rosemary Bernardi, a former member of the Evesham Township School Board, questioned the need to increase the budget’s surplus to $2.6 million, an increase from the previous year’s number of $1.4 million.
“In terms of your surplus, you’re allocating an additional $1.2 million in surplus,” Bernardi said. “In 2013, you had $1.4 million, and now you’re increasing it up to $2.6 million, so commenting I think that’s a little excessive in terms of additional budget for surplus.”
After the budget was adopted and the meeting had adjourned, Brown addressed the budget surplus increase, saying if at least 10 percent of the budget was in reserve, both he and the state Department of Community Affairs would be happier.
“With our budget, my goal is to have at least 10 percent of the budget in reserve,” Brown said. “That’s my goal. I think Tom’s goal (Tom Shanahan, chief township financial manager) would be if he could get 20 percent of the budget would be great for him. I think DCA would love to see any budgets that go up to there, because, remember, everything’s got to get approved by DCA. All of our budgets get approved by them, so if you can get 15 to 20 percent of your budget in surplus, you’re thought of very highly up there.”
Brown also said a larger budget reserve would lead to lower interest rates, a better bond rating and more savings over the long term.
“Most importantly, as you have a bigger reserve, you get lower interest rates, so you improve your bond rating,” Brown said. “We’re getting to a level where we’re going to be closing in on AAA bond rating, which would mean we would have lower interest rates on all future bonding. So if we can save a half percent, three-quarters of a percent on bonding over 15 to 20 years, just think of the savings, and that’s what our goals continue to be. I don’t think you can be overly conservative when it comes to surplus.”
