Video: Morristown 2016 Budget Proposal
By Kevin Coughlin
Jillian Barrick is used to working for municipalities where doing more with less is imperative.
But when she came to Morristown as administrator in October, she faced a new challenge:
Doing more with more.
Barrick dove into her first Morristown budget cycle with a tremendous windfall, courtesy of the town’s landmark property tax settlement with the Atlantic Health System, parent of Morristown Medical Center.
The result is a $52.1 million municipal budget with a tax decrease for homeowners — despite hefty spikes in town health insurance and pension costs.
There is money to beautify downtown streets, improve parks and launch a major traffic study for the congested downtown. With a big fat surplus left over, just for emergencies.
“I’ve been in two relatively distressed communities with very different financial pictures,” said Barrick, former administrator in Perth Amboy and East Orange.
“Here, because of the hospital revenue coming in, and the healthy assessed valuation across town, it’s a great problem to have. You get to think about how to provide services better, and you have the resources to execute that.”
It’s a problem at least 30 other New Jersey towns would love to have. That’s how many have followed Morristown’s lead by filing tax appeals against nonprofit hospitals, according to NJBiz.
After a state tax judge ruled in Morristown’s favor last year, Atlantic Health settled years of legal battles by agreeing to pay Morristown $10 million up front in penalties and interest. That lump sum came in December, and added to a surplus carried into this year.
On top of that, the town is receiving another $550,000 of these payments annually for the next decade. And Morristown gets $397,138 more this year in current taxes on the portion of the hospital deemed a taxable enterprise.
Separately, “Payments In Lieu of Taxes” (PILOTS) from redevelopment projects are bringing in another $385,000, primarily from the Modera 44 apartments. Hotel taxes are up by $165,000, too.
What all this means to the average Morristown homeowner, with a home assessed at $354,000, is a $70 decrease in municipal taxes, said Mayor Tim Dougherty, whose administration has held the line on taxes for six straight years.
The Mayor praised Barrick for “hitting the ground running” last fall. She succeeded Michael Rogers, who became administrator in Summit after a decade in Morristown.
Morristown’s council is scheduled to vote on the proposed budget on May 24, 2016.
STUDIES, STREETSCAPES AND SNOW-EATERS
The spending plan calls for $600,000 on streetscape improvements for Martin Luther King and Washington avenues, and $225,000 on upgrades to Gramby Park and parks to be named later.
On the capital side of the budget, $500,000 is earmarked for new public works heavy equipment, including a “snow eater” truck to speed snow removal. Another $200,000 is pegged for hardware and software at town hall. The fire station is scheduled for a new floor.
The town continues paying down debt–now about $12 million–on the sewer plant, with a goal of debt-free operation within a few years.
On the operating side, the town’s outstanding debt is just under $25 million. Debt service on that this year is $4.3 million, about 10 percent of the operating budget, Barrick said.
Five new hires are requested: Two police officers, a firefighter, a building inspector and a “program coordinator assistant,” to help Barrick manage redevelopment projects.
The Administration also anticipates hiring a traffic expert in the next few weeks, for a long overdue study of how to make vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians navigate more smoothly downtown.
“One of the first thing I noticed in town is that traffic is crazy,” Barrick said. “And as the town continues to grow, it’s going to be an issue. How do we solve that? It will take someone with creative abilities. Most places don’t have six figures for that.”
Yet Morristown does– even as prescription drugs have driven up health insurance costs by $659,000, and as pension obligations have risen by $627,000, partly due to retroactive police and fire contracts approved last year.
Some $4.2 million of the town’s surplus was applied to the 2016 budget, Barrick said. If all goes according to plan, she expects Morristown still will have an enviable $11 million surplus by year’s end.
Morristown probably would have had a balanced budget without the hospital money, Barrick said. But the other trappings would have been a stretch.
“This definitely gives us a lot of opportunities to think about what we do every day,” she said.
Video: Morristown Council questions 2016 budget proposal
