Officials: Municipality Must Now Earn Points to Receive Its Aid

The state has thrown one more wrinkle into the ability to get state aid.

Township Administrator Jim Naples announced Thursday that the governor's administration has issued a Best Practices Checklist, and municipalities must achieve a certain number of points in order to receive their final aid payments from the state.

"The municipality must pass a certain level to receive the final level of state aid," he said. "If you answer too many 'no's' to the questions, the aid is held."

The township is, this year, receiving $1.9 million less in state aid than in 2009.

But, Naples said, Bridgewater should meet enough of the requirements to get its final aid payment. 

"We're confident we'll be in the 99 percent bracket," he said of answering the questions on the checklist.

The biggest issue, Naples said, will be those questions that the town will have to answer "no" for because they apply for smaller towns.

"Some of the questions have no bearing on a municipality of our size," he said.

Some of the questions, Naples said, are also a bit vague, and his administration will be looking into them over the next few weeks. The checklist, he said, was issued Aug. 30, and has to be signed by Oct. 1.

"One is a budget question, and it asks if the municipality presents its budget in descending form from the most costly increase to the least," he said. "The way it's worded, I'm not sure if we can answer yes or no."

Other subjects covered in the proposed Best Practices Checklist include whether municipalities have multi-year financial plans and if limits were placed on public workers' wage hikes.

Naples made the announcement about the Best Practices Checklist as the council prepared to vote on a resolution in support of Gov. Chris Christie's proposal of a municipal tax toolkit to assist towns in meeting the 2 percent cap for annual property tax levy increases recently enacted by the state legislature.

The resolution was initially scheduled to be voted on at the Aug. 16 council meeting, but it was held while council members considered a reworded one presented by Council President Matthew Moench.

The original resolution was a form one from the New Jersey League of Municipalities.

Moench has said he preferred to tighten up some of the language in the resolution, and reworked it to make it read more cleanly.

The changed resolution says that the toolkit is designed to accomplish six objectives, namely collective bargaining reform; pension and benefits reform; civil service reform; management reform; a constitutional cap on increases in spending for direct state government services; and a cap on property tax increases.

The resolution then goes on to detail certain ways the toolkit could bring about relief to municipalities, without naming all of them, as does the form resolution from the League of Municipalities. Among a few others, Moench's resolution names arbitration reform, reform to the Fair Housing Act and disciplinary procedures.

Although the vote for the resolution was unanimous, Councilman Howard Norgalis said he does not usually support these kinds of resolutions.

"I am not a fan of these form resolutions," he said. "I think it will have absolutely no impact, but I will support it."

Moench has said the township normally does not approve resolutions that only serve to express support for state actions, but, because this one directly affects Bridgewater residents, he and Mayor Patricia Flannery believed it was necessary.

Naples said he believes it is important for municipalities to ask the legislature to move forward with any legislation that could assist local towns in providing relief for its residents and meeting the 2 percent cap.

"We are trying to say, you mandated the 2 percent cap, and you said you'd give us the tools to meet that," he said. "So pass the toolkit, and, hey, get the job done."