Nutley Commissioners Pass Budget

A month after presenting a $50 million budget that came in the wake of reductions, Nutley Commissioners passed a tightened budget.

Nutley officials unanimously passed a $49,874,000 budget at their April 25 special public hearing.

The budget is a $612,000 increase over the previous year and officials said that the budget increase was minimal compared with other state municipalities.

“This continues our efforts for cost containment going in a volatile economic environment,” Commissioner Thomas Evans said. He also noted that the budget was able to absorb the cost of the previous year’s extraordinary storms. 

The largest costs were health insurance, other insurance, storm emergency spending and the reserve for uncollected taxes. Evans said those four costs added up to $567,000 of the overall tax increase.

While officials stressed that the budget was lean and entailed a minimal increase to taxpayers, they declined to name the average property tax increase for a Nutley homeowner, citing the fluctuating nature of property assessment in the township.

Previously, Evans had said that 43 percent of assessed properties in lost value while 57 percent of properties assessed values stayed the same.

 At an earlier meeting, Evans placed the total loss of assessed value was more than $100 million, or nearly 2.5 percent of the $3.41 billion in total property values.

In 2012, the commissioners enacted a $49.2 million 2012 municipal budget that officials said contained a decrease in taxes of approximately $48 for a home assessed at $326,300, the township average at the time.