Because of my proactive stance on the budget, Lakewood Township is finding itself in a better financial position than some of the neighboring towns. For this reason, we do not have to institute “Furlough Fridays” at this point. By controlling spending, we have been able to offer no tax increase to our taxpayers. At the same time, it is very important to me that our town be able to maintain and provide the same level of services to our residents that they currently have.
For instance, if we did have to institute Furlough Fridays, it would impact upon garbage collection and many other Township services, including all those offered in the municipal offices. Please remember that all our policemen, firefighters, and EMS cannot be furloughed. Furthermore, the decision to institute furloughs cannot be arbitrarily undertaken by the Township. It would require our making application to the state showing extreme hardship, necessitating this action.
By working closely with the other committee members and spending countless hours with our manager, and by cutting millions of dollars of spending, we were able to introduce a budget with no tax increase. In fact, we have a slight reduction in our spending this year!
Other towns that are instituting furloughs are doing so because they have to. As an example, one of our neighboring towns that has instituted furloughs is still facing a tax increase this year, a far cry from Lakewood where we have been able to keep our spending stable and our services intact.
I would like to close by making everyone aware that this is the first year that net spending in our town has gone down. While it is true that some previous committees were able to lower taxes as well, they actually increased their spending. They were able to increase spending by taking advantage of increased ratables while the real estate boom was in effect and through one-time revenue boosters, such as land sales. We kept our tax rate stable the old fashion way; we cut spending.
Steven Langert, Mayor
Thank you Mayor Langert for raising my house taxes 10% this year and 10% since you came into office. Good going, and keep it up!
Thank you!!
listen its nice that the overall spending is down… but you gotta spread the pain around a little more this is about shared sacrifice… so far it looks like frum people now pay the taxs that the senor s were reduced….
Is lakewood really doing better than the other towns. It is true that there,was no tax increase this year, but that was only because for 10 years we have been going up an average of 7.6 percent a year I understand that we can’t accomplish everything overnight, but if we can lower the tax rate with furloughs why not. We are In dire straits.
MY TAXES JUST WENT UP $2000. IF NO TAX INCREASE MEANS SUCH A LARGE INCREASE IN MY TAXES WHAT DOES A REAL TAX INCREASE MEAN!!!!
hard to prove hardship to the state when your proposed tax increase is ZERO
THE ASSEMENMT WAS DISASTEROUS!!!!!!!
I love Stevie Langert, real nice guy and everything. But hey, even seasoned politicians only promise not to raise taxes, then go ahead and raise them. It takes a much more dedicated public official to announce “We didn’t raise taxes” after they just did! It must be the water in town hall…
there was no tax increase thanks to BOE not wasting, if we’re doing sooo good cut out taxes
I was just laid off from my job and my property taxes went up $1,150. Steve please retract your statement as it is insensitive to the tax payers. How many more rateables and new developements are in town now with the declining public school attendance… They should lay off a large nuumber of township employees immediately
The mayors says “We do not have to institute furlough fridays at this point” – Mayor plase come out and feel the pain the oilam is in, the recent increase (yes – the oilam’s taxes were increased) in the already outragous property taxes, has many yungeleit and balei batim in financial turmoil. If that’s not a good enough reason to cut spending than what is, Mr. Mayor?????????????
i agree 100% with #4 i pay plenty of taxes its relief to hear that we r not making any furloughs we should make furloughs and bring down the taxes.
i voted for you last time around and will not be conned into it again. even if you claim to keeo taxes even is true, you promised to LOWER taxes and you have failed!
Many of my neighbors taxes were increased by over 2000 just last week . This is outrageous . we just got the biggest tax increase in our history. The seniors just got the biggest decrease in history .
Dear Mr. Mayor,
How long do you think that Lakewood will be solvent? I just got my 3rd quarter tax bill. It was 20% higher than last year’s third quarter bill. Is that what you call Lakewood’s good financial shape
BTW even though the Mayor did not raise taxes this year he still passed an ordinance that reserved the right through a legal loop hole to raise taxes 8 percent next year.
The budget hearing is this thursday everyone should go and demand that they institute furloughs
who says we are solvent – we are all struggling so hard – the taxes are crazy high – do the furlough thing and give us a break on taxes – pleasze
I, too, have suffered a tax increase. And was unemployed. And a bunch of other things. But these comments are stupid. Maybe we should just shut down the town entirely, turn off streetlights between 6pm and 6am and sell the lake to developers so we can raise some money and cut taxes one year. next year we will all moan about no services and we will get them back but with a tax increase. Pain is painful and yes the taxes are too high, but ripping the first person to actually start correcting the problem is wrongheaded. and yes I will vote for him next year. and no I will not vote for Marta – she is all wrong for “unzere”.
most of you are clueless on how this whole thing works. your frustration makes sense, but this aint a grocery store, this is a government which has a responsibility to deliver services to ALL its people. ALL i said. live with it. or leave
Steve,
Case in point.
Did your own tax bill for your house go down this year?
does anyone out there know if there any legal channels to go throught to figure out where the money is going? I am willing to put up $1000 to hire a real audtor,accountant or lawyer to make a joint lawsuit on the twnsp for wasteful spending.Think about it all we get is bussing(i pay for it privately $350 for the year)and $5500 of my tax dollars go to boe. who are we supporting?BTW i am serious and if anybody is interested just post here and i will set up email address and we could figure this out
bottom line is that many of us just got hit with the biggest tax increase in history ( Oh I forgot ,the seniors taxes went down ) i heard there afre many hundreds of people who now got such a huge increase that they really cant afford their houses anymore .
not forgetting the 1.4 million dollars that were borrowed this year maybe we should have done a furlough instead
did anyone ask the question why was the reassessment done in the first place???? was the assessments so out of line to the point that it was state mandated? or was it the obvious.. for Bob to pacify the seniors ?
it was NOT State mandated . It was the easy way out of dealing with the tax appeals . SWhat essentially happened was that with the exception of the Seniors ,most people got assesed at close to true value . This way they can not appeal . The seniors got assessed under true value ,but we cant appeal based on that . You can only appeal if YOUr assesment is too high ,not if your neighbors is too low . So because of that ,Bob and Steve can tell you ” You have no right to complain ,your house is worth what its assesed for ” ( That is in fact what they tell people ) What they conveniently forget to tell you is that the tax rate went up almost 20 % to make up for the “lowball ” senior assesments and its everybody else whose taxes skyrocketed because of that . Had the Seniors also been assesed fairly most peoples taxes woud not have gone up so much
If you furloughed township employees remember this ..you will ultimately have to do more of your business on the other 4 days of the week. Unfortunately, you can not furlough emergency services (police, firefighters, EMS and their support staff). If you do wanted the township to do this there would be ramifications the town residents will feel. I know many residents of this town that live here and are barely getting by, it is not just one portion of this town that is suffering, it is the entire town that is suffering.
We can not appeal . The only possibility is a class action lawsuit against the twp to throw out the entire assesment as being improper .