Red Bank: No Proposed Tax Increase, But Locals May Still Pay More

RED BANK, NJ — The word "phenomenal" was councilman Hazim Yassin's choice to characterize Red Bank's 2021 budget.

During the borough Finance Committee's proposed budget presentation on Tuesday, Yassin announced there would be a 0 percent increase in Red Banks's tax rate (0.617) compared to last year.

"I think this is the first 0 percent increase in probably over a decade," Yassin said. "I'm glad that we've been able to kind of reel our finances back in a positive situation."

However, Darren McConnell, the borough's Interim Business Administrator, said residents might still see their tax bill go up or down, depending on changes in the assessed values of their homes.

"We receive the assessment and then multiply it by the tax rate," McConnell explained. "Overall the town did see an increase in assessed value from 2020 to 2021. In rather words, the evaluation of the entire town did go up from one year to the next."

The 2021 municipal purpose tax on the average residence will be $2,506.43. Compared to last year, the increase will represent an added $100,000 to the budget or $16 for the average home.

Another reason that might contribute to changes in individual resident's tax rates is any change from other taxing authorities, such as the county or the school district.

The town suffered a loss in revenue of over $2.5 million from 2019 to 2020, according to McConnell.

"Obviously, most of these losses were associated in some manner with COVID," the councilman said. "Some of that money we ultimately will recuperate, but to start off we had over a $2.5 million loss in revenue coming into this budget."

The town also had to deal with challenges in appropriations, such as increases in salaries and pension contributions and landfill and sanitation costs.

Due to an existing cash surplus, the borough was able to supplement the 2021 budget with $3.39 million (14 percent of its total).

"That's a benefit from some very conservative spending and some very wise decisions previously made by our administration, by our council, by our CFO," McConnell said. "Had we not had that this would have been a very different story in this story."

In regards to the American Recovery Program, the borough is expected to receive approximately $1.18 million in two payments. One payment of about $600,000 has already been made and the other one should come in sometime next year.

The funds can only be applied for a number of specific uses, such as replacing lost revenues due to the pandemic, investing in water, sewer or broadband infrastructure and using it for the response to the public health emergency. They can't, however, be used to reduce taxes.

There will be a special meeting of the Mayor and Council at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday with a public hearing on a resolution to amend the 2021 introduced municipal budget and a public hearing on a resolution to adopt the 2021 municipal budget.

Information on how to participate is available here.

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