HOBOKEN’S MUNICIPAL BUDGET - Hoboken’s budget was a mess before this crisis with a shortfall estimated at about $14 million driven by increased spending and labor costs and would have potentially required layoffs of up to 79 municipal employees, double digit tax increases and further depletion of our surplus account. To say that the COVID crisis exacerbates this issue is a significant understatement.
I actually do not know how we are going to navigate through this but the administration and our council subcommittee have been working to do so.
This is a macro issue and one that the federal government will have to solve. At all levels of government, revenues have reduced significantly. All use revenues are and will be down – whether sales tax, gas tax, parking revenues, construction permits, court fees, hotel taxes or income taxes. All down. We need the state to provide relief aid to fill what is probably an additional $5-8 million shortfall in Hoboken. But we are just one municipality and the state can’t currently afford to give us more because of their own $5 billion revenue shortfall. We all have to look upward to the next higher level for economic relief. So I do not know what the future holds for our budget, or our tax increase or layoffs. But whatever it is we will be as transparent as possible through this process.
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