Red Bank shuts offices to close budget gap

RED BANK — The second of three mandatory government shutdown days took place Friday, July 23, as implemented under the borough’s amended $19.22 million spending plan.

The Red Bank Borough Council unanimously passed the 2010 budget at a special public meeting June 18, which calls for unpaid furlough time for all borough employees in order to avoid layoffs and a reduction in municipal services.

“This is one way to balance the budget with the least impact in services,” Borough Administrator Stanley Sickels said in an interview. “It allowed us to retain our fulltime employees because we have been doing away with positions for quite a few years now. As retirements have been coming up, we have been consolidating positions and eliminating positions through attrition. We were already operating at a very lean staffing level. If we had to lay off people, it would have really cut into services.”

The three furlough days, negotiated down by the governing body from 10 days, will make up a $302,000 deficit, and the three furlough days for all municipal employees closed the remaining $90,000 gap.

According to a press statement from the Borough Clerk’s Office, all government offices, with the exception of emergency services, were closed July 23 and will shut down again Friday, Aug. 27.

The three shutdown days also affected sanitation pickup for residents west of Broad Street.

The borough is divided into two collection districts, and those residents east of Broad Street will also lose three days of service on Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day, according to the statement.

“Because of [the holidays], the east side of Red Bank doesn’t get their normal trash pickup,” Sickels said. “Normal trash pickup is on Mondays, so we figured if we did Fridays, we would balance that out; … the other side of town would lose three trash pickup days as well.”

Faced with a state aid reduction of $517,144, the borough also worked with various unions and negotiated concessions in order to balance the 2010 budget. Earlier in the year, the members of PBA Local 39 agreed to also take three unpaid days to be scheduled by the chief of police on staggered shifts. Sickels said the borough’s fire and first aid squad are all volunteers and will not be affected.

However, the governing body is still negotiating with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union, whose contract expired in 2009.

“They [the PBA] were mid-contract, and we negotiated three furlough days,” Sickels said. “Originally we were looking at 10 furlough days. We worked with both unions, the PBA and the CWA, as well as other department heads and other nonunion workers to identify additional cuts. We got it down to where we could erase seven furlough days due to these additional cuts and changes in the budget. Either we would have had to lay off six or eight people or see furlough days.”

Sickels explained the borough chose to close municipal offices on Fridays because the municipality used to function on a fourday work week. The third and final shutdown day will be Friday, Aug. 27.

“We used to be a four-day week,” Sickels said. “We went back to a five-day week, and since we had already for half a year been closed on Fridays, we thought that would be the least impact to the public.”

The adopted 2010 budget will increase the municipal tax rate from 46.2 cents to 48.4 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, amounting to a 2.2-cent increase. Under the budget initially proposed by the council, the tax rate would have increased to 48.5 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, a 2.3-cent increase.

The owner of a home that is assessed at the borough average of $407,000 will pay $1,969 in municipal taxes in 2010, up from $1,880 in 2009.

Residents with questions about the changes are asked to contact Sickels at 732- 530-2748.