PARSIPPANY — The Mayor presented the 2022 Township Budget at Tuesday, July 19 town council meeting, which includes a 3.3% tax increase. The introduction of the budget was approved unanimously.
“When I looked through this budget, it was disheartening,” Barberio said. “We have a financial crisis. Our budget challenges won’t be solved in one year.”
Councilman Paul Carifi said that he is “100% in support” of the mayor and the budget. “This year is like no other,” he said.
The town’s previous mayor, Michael Soriano, had “destroyed all finances” within “four short years,” Barberio said.
In four years, “the prior mayor certainly mismanaged the town,” Councilman Frank Neglia said. “God help us if it was any longer.”
In this budget, Barberio hopes to increase the police force, saying that Soriano “let the police department become depleted.” The police department is down to 81 deployable officers. We should be at 103 to 109 deployable officers. I would like to increase it to 96 or 97 by the end of 2022.
Council Vice-President Loretta Gragnani said that “severe cuts were made” and that Barberio “worked tirelessly to get the budget down.” Gragani and Neglia were on the Township’s Finance Committee.
“No one likes this tax increase,” Grangani said. “But this has to be done to put us in a better position next year.”
This year’s budget “only puts out the fire,” dePierro said. “It doesn’t solve the problem.”
“One of the things that has affected our town in the past was COVID; we all know that,” Carifi said. “With the past administration, spending continued at the same rate that it had always been, but our ratables and our revenue were way down. Way down. You have to dip into your savings and surplus. And that’s what was going on in the previous administration, and our surplus just kept going and going. Now it’s gone.”
The municipal portion of the taxes will increase the average residential assessment ($312,397.00) $312.40 per year or $26.03 per month.
The average residential assessment ($312,397.00) tax increase will be $478.00, or just under $40.00 per day, which includes municipal, school, county, open space, library and fire taxes.
The total 2022 budget is $241,553,717.41 as compared to the 2021 budget of $230,055,504.21. The 2022 budget includes an increase in school taxes of $2,643,143.11. (2021 School Tax was $146,841,284.00 and 2022 School Tax is $149,484,427.11).
In 2021, the School Tax portion of the bill was approximately 64% of the total tax. Municipal portion was 22.11%; Library was 1.28%; Municipal Open Space .63%; Fire Districts 2.11%; County 9.80% and County Open Space was .24%.
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