Shamong Township makes sacrifice to cut budget expense out
As the Shamong Township Committee sends its final draft of the budget to an auditor to be prepared for the state, it continues to search for solutions to generate revenue with state funding at a point that Township Administrator Sue Onorato referred to as “painful.”
“Our state funding is constantly just dropping more and more every year, I don’t see it every becoming a positive thing for us ever again,” Mayor Tim Gimbel said.
While the role of the committee is to try to figure out how it can make money for the township, it has admitted to having run out ideas. With school taxes going up again and a $1 million dollar road project in play, there is no room in the budget to buy much else.
Luckily, the winter of 2016 was a light one compared to years past in terms of snowfall, having had only one major snowstorm. So after spending about $100,000 in 2015 on snow cleanup and only about $30,000 this year, there will be some money saved to carry over.
However that also raised the question of whether the township necessarily needs to purchase a new plow truck the public works team has been requesting for years.
“If we have another winter like we did this year, we’d be paying for the brand new vehicle to be sitting around for 364 days out of the year,” committeeman Martin Mozitis said.
While the committee was in agreement that acquiring this new plow truck influences both public safety and their public works group that continuously does a remarkable job clearing snow off in a timely matter, surrounding towns often don’t clear their snow as fast.
“We had all those guys out on the road who plowed all Sunday night (during winter storm Jonas) and there ended up being no school Monday and a delayed opening on Tuesday, so what good did it do for us?” Mozitis asked.
He went on to suggest potentially giving the public works team more leeway when it comes to time requirements. For example, instead of giving it 12 hours to get the snow off the roads, letting it do it over a two-day period if that’s what other towns do, and it will save Shamong money.
He also suggested getting the county to plow its roads instead of Shamong Public Works plowing the county roads in exchange for a small amount of revenue.
“I’m looking for a way to get to where we need to get to without adding any tax increase, which is my concern,” Committeeman Di Croce said. “I believe they (public works) need a new truck, but whether or not this is an issue we can stretch out for another year or two in light of the fact that we’re getting clobbered with a $1 million road project is where I think we need to be focused.”
An additional issue is the township’s surplus not being where it needs to be to help pay for routine expenses and the more the committee pushes them off, the more they build up. It was discussed that the township will likely need to purchase a backhoe next year as well.
After a motion was made to budget $150,000 for the new plow truck, it was voted down 3–2.
The group also decided against the purchase of a new ambulance that has been lobbied for, for quite some time after the bid exceeded $250,000.
However through negotiation, the group decided to refurbish one of the existing ambulances and purchase a new box for another one for $105,000.
