Members of the Voorhees Township Committee voted to introduce the 2012 township budget at a Monday, March 26 meeting.
Township Administrator Larry Spellman said, as of now, the municipal budget is $25,495,000, which is $295,000 lower than last year.
The amount to be raised by taxpayers is $17,331,983.
For the averaged assessed home in the township at $332,648, residents will pay $1,501 for municipal services, or $125 a month, an increase of about $7 a month per household.
The budget, however, Mayor Michael Mignogna said, is still in its infancy stages.
“This budget is a work in progress as we continue to find ways to lower the budget in the coming weeks,” Mignogna said.
Spellman said the preliminary budget is within the state-mandated 2 percent cap, coming in $102,506 below the cap.
Spellman said he anticipates the budget may come under the cap even less, as the township continues to look for ways to cut costs and increase revenues. He said the current preliminary budget includes a $646,064 reduction in spending as compared to 2011.
Another tool to reducing budget figures could come from the ideas gathered by the citizen’s budget advisory committee, which was established in February and chaired by Committeeman Michael Friedman and Deputy Mayor Mario DiNatale.
The 25 or so residents have met twice already, to brainstorm new and creative ways to raise revenues and cut costs without sacrificing services, said resident and budget committee member Stuart Platt.
The group is in communication with the mayor and administration, presenting their ideas to for better budgeting along the way.
“At the first meeting, we looked at ways to raise revenues. We had a number of suggestions — a tax abatement program for businesses to choose Voorhees over other towns. The committee is geared toward making Voorhees more sellable,” Platt said.
At the second meeting, Platt said, the group discussed cuts and spending, noting the township has already utilized some in the current budgeting process.
“We’ll look to cut spending as a way to balance the budget, but we don’t want to cut services either,” he said.
The preliminary budget has a few months of tweaking before the committee will adopt it later this spring.
