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Home My Public Portal About1996/01/30 Budget Hearings were held by the Mayor and Council of the Borough of Carteret on January 30, 1996, 6 :00 P.M., Council Office, Municipal Building, 61 Cooke Avenue, Carteret, New Jersey. The following were noted present: Mayor Peter J. Sica Councilmember Bialowarczuk " Failace " Feingold " O'Brien Noted absent were Councilmembers Fazekas and Semenza. Also noted present was Patrick De Blasio. Mailed to the Home News & Tribune, The Star Ledger and posted on the bulletin board on January 26, 1996. a)Discuss 1996 Budget. Board of Health - Ellen Ransdell and Diane Kish were present. Patrick said last year she had a $75,000.00 budget and spent just about all of it. On the Air Pollution she had a $975.00 budget last year and she spent just about all of it. In Services of Visiting Nurses she had a $4000.00 and she left $2000.00. Ellen said the only thing they are really asking is enough money to cover the contract. Mayor Sica said they really have no choice in this. He said if the County goes up we have to have that. He said actually what they pay the County they could not replace for double. He said they will give them the $5000.00. This will make their budget $80,000.00. The Air Pollution and the Visiting Nurses will stay the same. Office on Aging - Jim Brewer was present. He said on the Office Supply amount in his budget that he submitted for $1700.00 he took off $1000.00 and make it $700.00 which made his budget the same as last year, $4000.00. 1 JANUARY 30, 1996 BUDGEl' HEARINGS January 30, 1996 PRESmf STATI11ENl' OF MEEITNG OOITCE PURPOSE OF 'lliE MEEITNG BOARD OF HfAl.:rn OFFICE 00 AGING JANUARY 30, 1996 LIBRARY POLICE ŒIEF JOSEPH SICA, Re:Police Department FIRSr AID Library - Ronna Pearl was present. She said she will live with what she had last year. Police Chief Joseph Sica - He said he managed to make some cuts and he passed out copies of what he cut. He said after he left the meeting last week someone discussed buying a four wheel drive vehicle. He said his people went out and got some of the specifications for the four wheel drive jeep and he said his budget doesn't reflect the cost of that four wheel drive jeep. He questioned if that cost would come out of his budget or someplace else. Mayor Sica said it would come out of Vehicles. He said he may buy one less car and buy the jeep. Chief Sica said he would rather not have the jeep. Mayor Sica said he may not be able to buy the jeep than. Chief Sica said his budget went ITom $227,000.00 to $221,859.00. Mayor Sica asked Councilmember Feingold, who is in charge of that department, if he thought they could live with that. Councilmember Feingold said they could. Patrick De Blasio asked the Chief if the Crime Prevention was okay at $1500.00 and the Narcotics at $4000.00. The Chief said it always stays the same. Patrick said he will round this budget out to $222,900.00. That was okay with the Governing Body. First Aid - Patrick said he had no First Aid contributions. He said he hasn't received any correspondence for what they wanted this year. He said last year they were at $25,000.00 and the year before that we gave them $10,000.00. Mayor Sica said we wouldn't give them $25,000.00 again this year. He said they gave them $25,000.00 last year because they ran into some serious problems so we can reduce that to about $20,000.00. Midway through last year we gave them $15,000.00 for the serious problems they were having, which has to be corrected. We have to sit down with the First Aid Squad, career Firemen and the Mayor and Council and see if we can work out some kind of understanding where they can park a First Aid rig at the Fire House where if there is not a response in a certain amount of time to the initial call then the EMT trained Fire Department men can respond with that rig. They are having a problem with manning the First Aid rig during the daytime hours and we cannot afford to have that. 2 ." JANUARY 30, 1996 Mayor Sica told the Clerk to send out a letter to the head of the FMBA the Fire Department and the First Aid, that the Mayor and Council will have a meeting with them next Wednesday, February 7, 1996 at 7:00 P.M FIRSr AID Continued Mayor Sica said in looking at the budget he said it is imperative that we hold the line on raises. He cannot stress that enough. The Medical Insurance has gone up under $27,000.00. Liability Insurance has gone up $35,000.00. PolicelFiremen's Pension has gone up $200,000.00. We are going to put $100,000.00 in Capital Improvement and $273,000.00 in (inaudible) Service, so you are talking about a lot of money. Ifwe even added even 1% to the salaries, it would be about $80,000.00, etc., etc. It would be too much for the taxpayers. Right now we are looking for a 9 1/2% tax increase. That is approximately $107.00. He said that is the budget they will submit to Trenton. Ifwe get the $400,000.00 in State Aid it will reduce that down some. Emergency Management - Mayor Sica said they will get the same as last year. Patrick said they had $5000.00 and they spent everything but $17.00. He commented that he spoke to them today about coming in. EMERGENCY MANAGJiMENl' Mayor Sica told the Council to look at the second page of the paper that Patrick gave them and they will see on the tax rate that they collected last year it was nine thousand point eight four. He said 1% represents $93,000.00. We put eight four one hundreds of a percent in the bank. We are only anticipating collecting $96,000.00. If we come in at the ninety six point eight four, it is fine, but, that is a normally high tax collection rate, so we don't take that chance. It happened last year because we had a tremendous push to get every penny in that we could so we could wipe out the deficit that we had ITom the prior years. The $229,000.00. That is how they were able to derive that and wind up with a surplus verses a deficite. In 1994 we wound up with a deficite of $296,000.00. In 1995 they paid off the million dollars to the Sewer Department and wound up with a plus of $235,000.00. He said we don't want to take that and add it in anywhere to reduce taxes, or anything like that because what would happen than would be the same thing that happened in 1994, which is that you will pay a figure somewhere along the line if you keep using up all of your surplus and than it doesn't give us the ability to have a cushion to work our money throughout the whole year to make money with. That is important. When you have money you make money. When you don't have money you only make profits. A man the Mayor called Doctor from Emergency Management was present and the Mayor then spoke to him. He went on to say that there is no way they can replace what they do. The only problem is we don't have any money. In 1994 there was a serious problem and we paid for it in 1995 . We still have a serious problem because without giving anyone a raise in Carteret there is a 9 1/2 tax raise with everybody living within the same budget they had last year. he said he knows they have to do something with their radios, etc. We will ask them to live with it with the same $5000.00 they had last year. 3 JANUARY 30, 1996 EMERGENCY Contitmed ADJOORNED Mayor Sica said we are putting $100,000.00 in Capital Improvement and we may be able to update their radios out of that. We also anticipate going down to the UEZ and if nothing else they will give us money for Emergency Management because 90% of the times they are called out it is in the Industrial Area and that is what it calls for so we will make applications to UEZ to do radios or something with them, so they are just asking them to live within the $5000.00 for anything other than Capital Expenses. He asked the man if they could do that. The man said yes. Mayor Sica said the key thing with that UEZ Zone is it has to show that the money is being used to upgrade the UEZ Zone. What better than the Emergency Management. If they went down there and told the UEZ Zone that we wanted to buy a brand new truck for the Emergency Management Corporation and that 90% of the time we use that truck in these circumstances, we could turn around and get twenty, thirty thousand dollars out of that account by just putting in three thousand. He said they can also do that with the police for a vehicle of that type because most of the time we use that type of vehicle is in the UEZ Zone A motion to adjourn was made by Councilmember Bialowarczuk and second by Councilmember O'Brien. After no further discussion at approximately 6:35 p.m., this meeting was adjourned. Respectfully submitted, ~~~~ KATHLEENM BARNEV Municipal Clerk KMB/lr ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- 4