Toms River Township introduced their 2016 budget Tuesday night which shows a six cent tax increase but Business Administrator Paul Shives said it wont be the final budget.

Toms River Town Hall
Toms River Town Hall (Townsquare Media NJ)
loading...

Among the revenues in this years budget are $13,463,000.00 in Surplus, $8,492,807.00 in State Aid, and $83,815,043.83 in local taxes.

Following Superstorm Sandy Shives anticipated it would take at least five years to recover and with a new budget this year, he said it may take longer.

"We said three to five years and that was definitely optimistic," said Shives. "Were probably now half-way through the rebuild process and were in year four. So it's more like the seven to ten year time frame.

Shives added there's been a significant increase in homes being re-constructed from Superstorm Sandy.
It's not the budget they know they're going to adopt said Shives before it's amended this summer as they plan to ensure grant funding is in place in order to get it where it needs to be.

"The biggest thing that has to happen is the state has to finish their review process of the new grant funding," said Shives. "Were not going to hold our public hearing on the budget until Mid-June."

He said this budget is to show the state they not only need the aid, but very much qualify.

"Because of the program guidelines, the preliminary budget must in essence serve as a justification for additional aid," said Mayor Thomas Kelaher. "Therefore the tax levy will be significantly overstated."

"We know that the tax levy that's in this budget is going to come down," said Shives. "We just don't know yet the amount."

The budget is nearly 2.5 million dollars less than it was last year at $126,265,083.43 where this years introduced budget is $123,853,514.56.

"What's going to end up happening is I think that the tax rate will increase but it will be an incremental increase," said Shives. "Something in the neighborhood of three and a half cents when were done."

Following storms like Sandy and more recently Jonas that have impacted the shore including here in Toms River, there has been a recovery plan in place and Shives said weather played a factor into this years budget.

"We set up what's called a 'Fund Reserve' for storm damage and storm costs," Shives said. "We set that up probably two years ago and we have appropriated money into that each year."

He adds while the 2016 budget does feature the "expenditures" from the winter storm, it does not have any FEMA revenue included, but he says that will come in at some point.

Expenditures on this years budget include $27,178,988.00 for public safety, $30,765,380.00 for Ins. and Employee Benefits, and $13,780,861.40 for Capital/Debt Service.

Meanwhile the local tax rate last year was $0.597, showing this year it is $0.660 equaling  a change of $0.0625.

"You can't anticipate that revenue until you get a final notice," said Shives.

The Toms River budget also has $10.3 million on ice for the NJ State Law statutory requirement for the "Reserve for Uncollected Taxes".

This symbolizes a spike of almost $800,000 for that particular category.

"What we have to budget in our budget is to make sure the other taxing entities get all of the tax revenue that they have levied," said Shives. "We've managed to bring the expenditures down,and if you look at the budget today...it looks like we have this huge tax increase, we will not have when were done."

Shives also said there are no union issues this year.

But as far as any new jobs here Shives said, "There are no new positions in this budget, it is a maintenance budget to keep the level of services where it is."

Until they get the funding ironed out with the grant Shives says they can't fill the nine vacant spots for police officers.

More From 92.7 WOBM