Borough of Bergenfield, New Jersey - official web site of Bergenfield, NJ

Within the next few weeks the Borough of Bergenfield will adopt a six month budget to carry us through December 31, 2010. This Transitional Year Budget will allow us to return to a calendar year budget beginning on January 1st. Calendar year budgets are normal for most communities in the state as it was in Bergenfield for many years. Once adopted the calendar year budget will have no effect on the taxpayers except to make it more convenient to determine taxes for the entire calendar year.

Before the state will allow a community to return to a calendar year budget, the Department of Community Affairs performs a detailed review of the proposed budget to assure that the transition is made without any additional cost to the taxpayers and to assure that the borough has properly estimated their cash flow needs for the six month period. This has been satisfactorily accomplished with a recommendation that we increase our Reserve for Uncollected Taxes due to several unique conditions expected in the near future. These include the inability to sell tax liens until 2011 and several significant tax appeals.

While the borough’s fiscal health is generally good it is no secret that the nation, state and borough are suffering through a severe recession.  This has brought about some problems both locally and for the state that has impacted our cash flow. Locally we have had a reduction in income due to lack of building activity, increased tax appeals and tax delinquencies. Due to the state’s budget problems the borough lost approximately $420,000 in state aid while the school system lost some $4,000,000. All of this impacts the total tax rate as the municipality is the collector of taxes for the municipality, school and county.

Regardless of the these difficulties we feel confident that the borough will be able to achieve the goal set by Governor Christie for the coming budget year without any significant reduction in services. For 2010 the municipal portion of the budget will increase approximately 1.7% over the 2009 budget. The 2009 budget showed a reduction of 3.8% over the previous year of 2008, my first year as mayor, and the increase in 2008 was 1.8% above the 2007 figure of 8.3%. While the Governor goal has been set at a 2% maximum budget increase throughout the state your Mayor and Council have successfully met that goal for the past three budget cycles and would expect to do so again in 2011.