East Windsor Finance Board Slashes $584,000 From Budget

Gallows humor prevailed at one point during the East Windsor Board of Finance meeting on Wednesday evening.

Coming off a rough referendum result Tuesday, at which voters soundly rejected the proposed $35.4 million budget by a 2 to 1 margin, finance board Chairman Jason Bowsza quoted the movie “Argo” when considering an additional $55,000 cut to the Board of Education budget.

“This is the best bad idea we have,” Bowsza said.

And so it went, as the finance board eventually slashed $584,000 from the budget to bring it down to $34.83 million, which represents a 1.98 percent spending increase over current levels.

If approved by voters, the mill rate would increase from 24.726 mills to 28.9964 mills. But because people’s property values decreased with this year’s revaluation, the resulting tax increase - if there is a tax increase at all on certain properties - will be not be as dramatic as the mill rate would suggest.

Regardless, at the beginning of the meeting, finance board members were determined to bring the proposed spending increase to below 2 percent (the original spending increase rejected by voters was 3.69 percent).

The 2 percent figure is important because of a charter provision that states that, if the budget fails at three referendums, a budget is automatically adopted with a built-in 2 percent spending increase over the prior year.

The cuts are as follows:

• $355,000 from the Board of Education

• $50,000 from the ambulance service;

• $40,000 from the East Windsor Fire Department for two part-time firefighters;

• $8,000 from the tax relief fund;

• $40,000 from pavement management;

• $5,000 for a pumper hose for the fire department;

• $18,000 for a light tower;

• $10,000 for POCD update;

• $10,000 from the revaluation fund;

• $28,000 for the fire department’s thermal imaging cameras;

• $5,000 in grant funding.