New Budget Raises Municipal Taxes About $71

Municipal property taxes for the typical Hopatcong homeowner will raise about $71 under the budget approved Wednesday night.

The new tax rate of 60.3 cents per $100 of assessed valuation is up from 58 cents in 2011. For the owner of a home valued at the borough average of $309,000, that means a municipal tax payment of $1,863, up from $1,792. Those figures don't include taxes for school district and county expenditures, which fall under their own budgets.

The $16,179,793 spending plan—about $1 million more than the 2011 budget—passed unanimously. on March 7.

"It was a very good budget," Mayor Sylvia Petillo said after the council meeting. "We were almost $400,000 below the 2-percent cap with everything. With all the exceptions in there. The only thing that hurt us was that property assessment. Anywhere we could cut it back, we would cut it back."

When Petillo referred to "that property assessment," she was talking about the steep drop in total assessed property value Hopatcong saw from last year. In 2011, Hopatcong's total assessed value—or the value of all property in the borough added up—was $2.037 billion. That has fallen in 2012 to $1.996 billion—a $41 million drop.

The total assessed property value directly affects the tax rate. If the total assessed value had stayed flat from 2011 to 2012, taxes on the average borough home would have risen $34, said accountant Paul Lerch of Lerch, Vinci & Higgins.

The tax levy—the total amount of tax dollars raised borough-wide—could have increased to 3.28 percent if the borough had used the full amount of money available under the 2-percent cap.

State law prohibits the levy from growing more than 2 percent year over year, but makes exceptions for expenses such as pensions and health insurance payments. But even with those exceptions, Hopatcong came in $388,164 beneath the 2-percent cap in the proposed spending plan.

Legally, the tax levy for items under the 2-percent cap could have been as high as $12,427,381 instead of the finalized $12,039,217, officials said.

Most costs rose within the proposed budget.

The general government line item—which Lerch said includes administration, collections and staff—climbed $447,107, up to $3,054,619 in from $2,607,512 in 2011. Lerch said $300,000 of that increase comes from a $300,000 settlement PSE&G made with Hopatcong regarding its proposed Susquehanna-Roseland power line project.

Capital improvements rose $229,530, up to $305,120 from $75,590 in 2011, due to a Department of Transportation grant, Lerch said.

Other increases included debt service—up $161,290 to $1,176,170 from $1,014,880 in 2011; restitution for uncollected taxes—up $180,000 to $1,480,000 from $1,300,000 in 2011; and public works—up $104,996 to $1,655,272 from $1,550,276 in 2011.

Police was one of two line items to see cuts, dropping $183,425, down to $2,920,838 from $3,104,263 in 2011. Lerch said retirements were a main factor in the drop. Statutory and fixed charges, such as pension payments and social security, also fell $115,773, to $1,439,689 from $1,555,462 in 2011. Lerch said revisions in state math helped municipalities save on those costs this year.