ROBBINSVILLE — Nonunion township employees will get a salary bump this year, but after discussions between Mayor Dave Fried and council members this week, it will be slightly less than anticipated.
The township council on Thursday voted to adopt its 2014-15 municipal budget, a $21.3 million spending plan that will keep the municipal tax rate at 52.2 cents for an average $1,992 municipal tax bill.
But the budget was only adopted after a back-and-forth discussion over a salary increase for nonunion staff members proposed by Fried.
The budget had included 2.85 percent salary increases for nonunion staff members, including directors and supervisors, but Council President Sheree McGowan said the council instead wanted to “make sure we’re not increasing the budget just for the sake of increasing it.
“We do a lot with what we have and (administration officials) work very hard at explaining why they need what they need,” McGowan said. “This is money that could go into the surplus, so we have money available and we’re not forced to raise taxes when there’s something like a Hurricane Sandy.”
Fried argued that the salary hikes made up for previous years of no salary increases that occurred while employees began contributing more for health insurance.
“A good chunk of the reason I was able to make a flat budget this year was because these employees are paying so much more,” Fried said yesterday. “Many of these employees are making less money than they were last year.”
Council members also removed a $300,000 line item from the budget that would have gone toward co-funding new security cameras in the Robbinsville public school district.
The cameras have been a source of tension between the municipality and school district. It arose when the school board passed a budget that used capital expenditures to pay for the cameras.
The township had banked on each entity contributing $300,000 and expected to recoup the funds with grants and forfeiture money from the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office.
Fried had planned to keep those funds in the budget to pay for infrastructure costs in connecting the school cameras to Robbinsville police systems, but council members cut the line item completely.
The township will also pay down its debt by more than $995,000 throughout the course of the budget, resulting in paying about 5.5 percent less interest overall.
“That’s what we’re trying to do in the township, reduce our overall debt so we can reduce our debt payments and put that money into services or tax relief,” Fried said.
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