Eatontown Mayor Looking To Address 2014 Budget Now

By Christopher Sheldon

Eatontown Mayor Gerald Tarantolo said he is concerned about next year's budget season and would like to get a head start on the process.

Tarantolo asked the Eatontown Council Financial Committee, which includes Eatontown Council President Anthony Talerico and Councilman Dennis Connelly, to begin looking at the budget now instead of waiting until the fall.

"I got my tax bill, and just like everyone else, I looked at it, analyzed it and I wasn't happy with what I saw," Tarantolo said. "The municipal component of the tax rate was increased by 5 and half cents."

"Overall, the tax rate increased by 13 cents because of the other entities that are a part of it, the schools, the county and the municipal component," Tarantolo continued. "That disturbed me."

Tarantolo said the municipal portion of the tax rate is "steadily increasing" and the school portion has decreased over the last few years.

He said the loss of borough ratables has helped cause the increase in the municipal budget.

"We lost $600 million in ratables from 2007 up to the present," Tarantolo said. "Our ratable base is now $2 billion plus, and at one time it was $2.6 billion. That concerns me."

The mayor said the borough lost $50 million in ratables this past year and is already 95-97 percent developed.

"We don't have much more development that we can actually undertake without being completely developed," he said. 

He said the borough's surplus has also been depleted and now sits at just over $700,000.

Tarantolo suggested that the finance committee should start meeting with the borough's auditor, Bob Oliwa, now and start coming up with some options for the 2014 budget.

Talerico and Connelly said they would be willing to do so.

Tarantolo said one of the things he has proposed to help build the borough's surplus up is to sell off borough-owned property.

"We're sitting on some very valuable property and the real estate market is starting to pick up," he said. "Developers are out there, they want to build homes."

Councilman Meir Araman said the borough try to "market Eatontown as business friendly."

"We have a lot of vacancies and a lot of buildings that are unoccupied and we're actually still losing businesses and we need to stop it," Araman said.

Tarantolo agreed and said that he would be in favor of any incentives that can bring businesses to the borough.

He said he is hopeful that the council is able to put forth the effort to look at the 2014 budget now and come up with ideas to help ease the tax burden on residents.

"I'm hoping we all pitch in together on this and pull together and hopefully we can come up with some options that may be available to us to give us some tax relief," Tarantolo said.