Committee to Examine Budget Wants Vs. Needs

In the coming weeks the township committee will examine wants versus needs as it moves forward with the budget process, Mayor Mark Dykoff said.

Chief Financial Officer Adrian Fanning has presented some numbers to get the committee started. The township will have $21,700,000 in revenue for the 2012-13 budget and $2.8 million in surplus, of which $2.4 million is available to be used.

Appropriations have yet to be finalized since the committee has several capital requests to review, Fanning said.

The committee will also have to consider any grants that aren’t fully funded as well as personnel and promotion issues, he said.

“I asked Ms. (Veronica) Laureigh (township administrator) to meet with department heads to discuss their wants. And then talk to Mr. Fanning to see if we can afford it,” Dykoff said.

Department heads have submitted their budget requests to Laureigh, who will work with Fanning to present a proposed budget to the committee.

Dykoff asked Laureigh to find out why departments need certain equipment or new hires.

“It’s something we’ll really take into consideration,” he said. “We want to maintain the services but we have to balance the budget.”

The budget process will be slightly different from the previous year. Last year, department heads approached the committee during several budget meetings and presented line item by line item. That will not be the case for the 2012-13 budget.

Because the departments went line-item-by-line-item last year, there might not be a need for that this year, Laureigh said. Some of the municipal departments stayed stable or reduced their budgets.

The committee will use the budget workshop meetings to move forward on the budget and ask any department heads questions that they may have, Dykoff said.

The first budget workshop will be held at the on Thursday, March 15 at 7 p.m. The municipal complex departments will be present for this meeting.