TOMS RIVER – The Toms River Township Council introduced a $124.8 million budget at its most recent meeting.
Budgets are usually introduced in spring and then adopted later, after officials know the exact amount of state aid the township will be receiving.
The budget, including paying off debt, would be $124,867,859. This is a decrease of $1,516,140 from last year’s $126,383,999.
The amount to be raised by taxes would be $82,089,203. This would be an increase of $529,509 from last year’s $81,559,694
The tax rate is staying the same, at 63.4 cents per $100 of assessed valuation. The amount is staying the same, despite the increase in taxation, because there are also more ratables to share the burden, Business Administrator Don Guardian said.
A homeowner with the average property value of $272,380 would be paying $1,728 for municipal taxes, same as last year. This figure does not include school, county, or other taxes.
One of the challenges in crafting this year’s budget is making room for the capital projects, Guardian said. There were $25 million in capital needs. While crafting the budget, the financial department had to assign priorities as to what needed to be done right away and what could wait for future years. This was to keep control of the costs and keep them relatively level from year to year.
The ratable base – all of the buildings and properties in town – are still below where they were before Superstorm Sandy hit, he added.
