Town tries to regain solid financial footing
We are in the midst of very tough economic times. In spite of this, through the hard work of the Lakewood Township Committee, the manager, the Budget Advisory Committee, and other concerned groups in Lakewood, we have been able to begin to put our town on a path back to fiscal stability.

If we take into account that we are mandated by the state to budget $1,537,898 to deal with tax appeals, and that we are contractually obligated to budget $73,340 for salaries and $194,000 for pending retirements, we have total mandated expenditures of $1,805,238. The reason salaries are up only $73,340 is because we eliminated 13 positions in town hall.

If we also take into account an increase of $281,514 in the cost of our utilities, the total is over $2 million of spending in 2009 that is beyond our control. Through our collective efforts, however, we were able to minimize the effects of these forced expenditures by cutting in other areas.

The obvious question to me is, if a penny on our tax rate equals $787,393 and we are spending only $1,885,821 more in 2009, our tax increase should only be 2.39 cents - why is it 5 cents? The answer lies in our surplus account.

Every year the township uses money from surplus to offset spending and tax increases.

In 2008 the township used $7,570,000 of its surplus. This

year we are using $5,500,000. The extra increase is in the $2 million that we are not using. In fact, if the township did not have a tax appeal problem and we had surplus to use, we would have been able to cut the tax rate this year.

As a point of information, in 1999 we had over $15 million in surplus. We currently have only $1,500,000. Given all the facts, I believe we have begun to put the township on sound fiscal footing.

Are we finished? No. Is there more to be done? Yes. Just as a baby cannot run before it learns to walk, we cannot solve all our problems in our first year.

We look forward to having more input from the citizens of our town who share our concerns.

Steven Langert

Deputy Mayor

Lakewood