Freeholder Predicts 'Slight' County Tax Hike in 2011

Putting together a spending plan for Ocean County's government for 2011 is "the toughest challenge we've faced,'' according to Freeholder John C. Bartlett Jr., predicting a drop in the budget from this year's $348 million and a "slight'' increase in the county tax rate.

"We will be shedding functions. Each freeholder has been looking at his departments,'' he said. "People are hurting across the board and they want government to contract.''

Like most government agencies, Ocean County's government is seeing revenues shrink while fixed costs rise.

Interest on investments, fees paid to the county clerk and sheriff, and a shrinking property tax base mean less money coming into the county treasury. Health and pension costs are continuing to rise. For a year and a half the freeholders have not been filling jobs as people leave them "except on rare occasions," Bartlett said.  Last year that left 55 jobs unfilled. This year it is about 60 more, he explained.

The opening of an addition to the Ocean County Jail next year means 28 more corrections officers have to be hired.

"We've come through the first three years of this downturn in good shape,'' he said. So good that the county has an AAA bond rating for the first time since he was elected a freeholder in 1979.

"Last year was difficult,'' because revenues "were way down,'' he said.

Shock absorbers, he said, were built into earlier budgets which helped ease the pain. Where the freeholders had been spending cash to pay half the cost of big-ticket capital projects, that spending was cut. Surplus in the budget, which was $54 million in 2006, dropped to $34 million last year, and will be even less this year.

Where $17 million in surplus was used last year to offset spending, this year he said only about $11 million will be available. "Those are preliminary numbers. We have to maintain a strong surplus to keep our bond rating,'' he said. The goal is to spend no more in surplus than can be regenerated next year.

Pension and health benefit costs are expected to rise another $5 million next year, so the freeholders are looking to "get out of businesses we can get out of,'' according to Bartlett.

Fees will be charged for others, like transporting the county's stage to various municipal functions, increasing the cost of projects the county does for municipalities, and hiking the costs of using the county's golf courses in Little Egg Harbor Township and Brick.

"The golf courses have to pay for themselves,'' he said.

The drop in housing prices has an impact on the ratable base used to figure the county tax rate. Last year it dropped $4.4 billion.  This year the drop is estimated at $3 billion.

"It will take three tenths of a cent on the tax rate just to make up for that,'' Bartlett explained. That rate had sunk to 25.4 cents per $100 in 2008 because of the booming economy and soaring property values. It inched up slightly in 2009, and to 27.2 cents last year.

Work continues on the budget, which is traditionally introduced in February, with a public hearing in March.