PLUMSTED – Township officials unanimously approved the adoption of their 2023 municipal spending plan during their latest Committee meeting.
The budget features the same tax rate going forward in 2024. Committeeman Leonard Grilletto, who chaired the committee that went over the budget, said, “The total budget is $6,392,419 – very close to what we had in 2022.”
“There is a zero increase in the municipal tax rate which is .0316 per ($100 of assessed valuation). The average home in the township is valued at $281,177. Our ratable base went up, so the total tax bill based on the average home would be $8,028.59.” The budget is available on the township website at Plumsted.org.
“We were able to do a lot while keeping the tax rate stable,” Committeeman Dominick Cuozzo said.
Mayor Robert Bowen had told The Jackson Times prior to the budget adoption that “our community recently approved a fire district referendum, 4 to 1, to increase the fire district tax by $121 for the average homeowner to provide essential funding our Plumsted EMS service. The committee will do its best to keep any tax increase at a minimum despite inflationary pressures and our continued investments in infrastructure.”
Lennar Issues
Residents of the Lennar development were pleased to hear some progress concerning an issue that has been the subject of controversy for months at Committee meetings. Homeowners there can’t apply for certain senior programs such as ANCHOR and Senior Freeze, due to an agreement between the township and Lennar. This agreement allows Lennar to make payments to the town instead of paying taxes as the development grows.
Committeeman Grilletto announced, “we have some proposals that may alleviate some of their problems. Some from our financial advisor. We will invite in the next 60 days our professionals to come with people from Lennar and see if we can come up with a plan that we can work out that by December can give some relief to the people of Lennar and at the same time would enable our surplus to help reduce taxes to everybody on the municipal level.”
Road Projects
The mayor also noted an application to the Department of Transportation for grant funds “which basically ranked every single one of our 110 municipal roads by quality going to the bottom and working the way up. Jenson Court and Maria Drive were on that list toward the bottom as our engineer felt they were good candidates for the criteria of the DOT grant program.”
Estimates are also being worked on for repairs to Hodgkins Drive and several other roads. “We are working on the list. We realize a lot of our roads are about the same age and are about to fail all at the same time but we are trying to do each year what our budget will allow us,” Mayor Bowen added.
The mayor explained a resolution the Committee is passing that supports having an Ocean County representative to serve on the NJ Board of Public Utilities. “We do speak on the rate increases and other things that effect the public however this would actually give us as a recommendation from Ocean County, our own representative on the BPU.”
