News
M'town Solicits Online Comments On Budget
By Ryan Fennell
MIDDLETOWN - A serious and difficult budget year with the potential for a 13 percent municipal tax hike has prompted the Middletown Township Committee to solicit budget comments on it's website prior to the public hearing scheduled for July 19 at 8 pm.
"The budget is coming along," said Mayor Gerard Scharfenberger. "We're still looking at areas to cut. There are going to be more cuts."
Scharfenberger said that the committee has received numerous suggestions through its Web site and many of them are intelligent and reasonable ideas.
"There are a lot of things that people suggest that make sense but legally we can't do them or are things that we are already doing," Scharfenberger said.
Some examples of suggestions that the township would not legally be able to implement included forcing unions to take a 10 percent cut or offering 401k's to employees and removing them from the pension system.
An example of a path the committee has already taken is requiring employees to pay into the health benefits program.
"Some recommendations had to do with the school budget. People don't always realize that we're a separate budget from (the school)."
"For the most part they were things that we're already doing or we're bound by law that we can't do," Scharfenberger said.
Scharfenberger hopes that a list of approximately 30 proposals from the governor, known as the governor's Tool Kit, is ultimately adopted by the legislature.
Scharfenberger said that if the tool kit is adopted it would give his municipality and others throughout the state more freedom in the budget process.
