After Bestowing Honors, Borough Adopts Budget, Discusses Municipal Construction Projects at Meeting

The evening started out as a recognition of dedicated service to the community: Former interim Borough Police Chief Phillip J. Crosson was sworn in as the borough's permanent police chief for strong and exemplary leadership and the Jaycees of Chatham were congratulated for 50 years of service to the borough.

But the council soon got down to sobering business at Monday night's council meeting, addressing cuts to the borough's municipal budget and approving a resolution to introduce a municipal budget which would increase homeowner taxes by 1.75 percent—or by about $40 a household for a $688,000 home—and eliminate one police officer position.

About a month ago, the in state aid, which was a 3.5 percent decrease from 2009. Chief Financial Officer Tammie Kopin, during her presentation of the budget, called the cuts "fairly dramatic."

Indeed, soon after Crosson was sworn in as the borough's newest police chief, Kopin revealed that the budget would eliminate one police officer from the force, a concession Crosson seemed reluctant to make at the March 23 meeting.

The recent retirement of three borough police officers opened up three positions to be filled, but the budget would allocate funds to fill only two of those three positions and just one new police officer would be hired. If needed, Kopin said another could be hired down the road.

After being sworn in Monday night, Crosson said the biggest challenges he was going to face as police chief were economic-based.

At the March 23 council meeting, Crosson said that since coming to Chatham 18 years ago, the nationally accredited police department has been reduced in size by seven officers—a "28 percent reduction which is starting to affect our performance," he said. Furthermore, Crosson said that failing to replenish the open positions would result in more overtime and, in turn, tired officers who could be more susceptible to injury.

"I really believe that these officers need to be replaced for us to continue providing services. We are at most times operating on bare minimum," he said. "We, as I've said before, are one bad incident or call from being undermanned."

At the March 23 meeting, Councilman Joseph Marts agreed with Crosson.

"I think it's very important to hire more police officers," he said. "I think that is very, very critical."

At the meeting Monday night, Marts said that the budget committee had worked with the police chief to create the budget.

"We did great deal of homework," he said. "We would have liked to have three officers, but we distilled it."

Council President James Collander explained the reasons behind the cuts to the police department.

"We have to look at cuts to personnel … carefully. We have to have an exist strategy so that if we choose not to fill [the position], we still can in the future by budgeting for it," he said.

The budget, which Collander said contained "the best and least prohibition options," would also reduce appropriations by $60,000.

"Any further reduction would impact services negatively," Collander said.

Time will tell how the budget affects services, though Collander said he doesn't expects pressure from Trenton to let up. He believes budget cuts will only increase in the next couple of years, especially considering the property tax caps the governor hopes to enact.

"If Trenton keeps squeezing, [there is] no question that we will run out of wiggle room. We have a tax cap to deal with—it starts putting us in a little bit of a vice grip," he said.

Collander's statement was met with laughter. One person called out, teasingly: "A little bit?"

"I can never foresee taxes going down the way things are going on in the state," Collander added.

Kopin presented the budget at a meeting already packed with budgetary agenda issues ranging from the renovations of Shepard Kollock Park and the Memorial Park pool to a presentation by School District of the Chathams' Superintendent Jim O'Neill about the 2010-2011 school budget.

Borough Engineer Vincent DeNave presented the council with the estimated costs to renovate Shepard Kollock Park. The biggest issue with the park, DeNave said, is poor drainage. Repairing the problem would cost $250,000, although $500,000 has been allocated to the project all together. The additional money could be used to redo the baseball fields, put up bleachers, create a walking path and put in an irrigation system.

DeNave made it clear, however, that he plans to address the drainage issue first.

"[We are] scaling back the things that are not an immediate need," he said.

The Council also discussed the Memorial Park pool. Councilman James Lonergan asked the council to advise the Memorial Park Pool Committee about what to do with the barely used pool, an issue that the committee has been struggling indecisively with for the past 30 years. Should the borough bother spending the money to open the pool this year, some asked, when only 3 percent of Borough residents use it?

Eventually, under Lonergan's recommendations, the council agreed that the pool would stay open, undergo minor repairs, and raise rates to $125 per adult and $400 for families. Senior rates would remain at $50.  After this year or the next, however, the council said they would probably close the pool and attempt to share services with the township's Colony Pool.

Councilmen John Holman and Bruce Harris questioned the wisdom of this decision. At $30,000, the budgeted money to open and repair the pool might be better used to staff police officers, he said.

"I'm troubled that we decided we would spend capital in a pool we're closing in one or two years," Harris said.

Holman discussed the police situation.

"Would we rather have extra policemen or have a service we don't even know will be around?" he said.

The 2010 budget is scheduled to be adopted May 10.