Text of 2013 Budget Address from Mayor Jay A. Gillian

2013 BUDGET ADDRESS
MAYOR JAY A. GILLIAN
FEBRUARY 14, 2013

Good evening and Happy Valentine's Day.

Because of the length of the agenda I’m going to keep my remarks briefer than the past couple years.

I do appreciate the opportunity to discuss the state of the city as well as the budget.

Looking back, needless to say, it’s been quite a year since I last addressed the Council and presented my administration’s budget.

The budget process in 2012 was informative and smooth, and I appreciated the Council’s support in adopting a budget that was above all else responsible. One of my objectives coming into office was to not make the budget process a game or a negotiation. We’ve made our expectations clear, the Council and I together, to the senior staff. Present what is needed to maintain the expected levels of service in the most cost-efficient manner.

I’ll speak more specifically about the budget in a moment.

The fact that I can again represent that the budget is responsible and fair is due to some good things that we accomplished in the past year.

We have negotiated and approved contracts that are fair to both our team members and the taxpayers.  Although there are short-term benefits compared to previous contracts, many of the dividends will appear over time as our work force becomes younger through attrition.

We’ve developed and adopted the most aggressive capital plan in the city’s history to provide the improvements to our infrastructure that are long overdue. We’ve done this without burdening the taxpayers in the future by following our professionals' advice, taking advantage of market conditions, and restructuring our debt to provide stability and save money over the long term. 

We had a good year in terms of revenue with significant increases in the areas of parking, construction code and the Aquatic and Fitness Center.

Thanks to the efforts of the Tourism Commission and the Chamber of Commerce we had a solid summer season, despite a continued sluggish economy. 

But obviously none of these subjects will be the first thing that any of us remember about the past year. That distinction goes to what occurred just over a hundred days ago.

Superstorm Sandy confirmed some important things and taught us some important things:

#1:  We are ready. The training and planning that our team has done over many years with our partners at other levels of government had our community as prepared as possible for the storm and the recovery.

#2:  We should always listen to the advice and direction of our emergency management professionals.  When we are directed to evacuate, we should do just that.  Too many people stayed on this island, and that includes me.  We must never forget that if not for a landfall just twenty to thirty miles further south, our lives and the lives of our first responders would have been in jeopardy. 

#3:  We have a great community and that’s the simple reason why we are recovering as fast as we are. 

Some of the images from this storm and its aftermath that will stay with me forever include:

• Our Fire Department fighting fires in unbelievable conditions that could have easily wiped out entire neighborhoods.

• The volunteers, many of whom had serious damages to their homes, spending the hours immediately after the storm transferring the Food Cupboard to a new location.

• Our downtown merchants receiving help from the students at the high school, volunteer contractors and complete strangers. 

• Our Public Works Department overseeing and conducting the biggest cleanup in our city’s history in an unbelievable amount of time.

• The residents of our Housing Authority moving back into their homes over the past two weeks and in the week ahead.

On that last point, I have to take this opportunity to again thank the City Council, the Housing Authority, my senior staff and the contractors that have made this happen. There’s no question we would have lost many of these families and seniors from our community if we hadn’t acted.  A few hours ago I was advised that the remainder of the family units will have C.O.’s issued tomorrow and can be moved into immediately. The senior units are expected to be ready next week.

City staff at every level continues to be involved in the recovery from this storm on a daily basis.  In addition to the people working hard to get our beaches and public properties back in shape, our Community Services team and others are dealing with a huge volume of calls, walk-in customers and other information from property owners, contractors and professionals involved in the repair, rebuilding or replacement of damaged homes.

All of this has obviously been complicated by FEMA’s release and the state’s adoption of Advisory Base Flood Maps and the coming changes to flood insurance rates. 

We are being extremely proactive in our approach to these maps. On your agenda this evening is a resolution approving a professional services contract with a nationally recognized coastal engineering firm to assist us in dealing with FEMA in the months ahead as they prepare preliminary maps for release this summer.  It is our objective to do everything possible to work with FEMA in order to have the preliminary maps be more accurate and more realistic in terms of the threats of flooding on many parts of the island that the advisory maps have designated as the “V” zone.

The ABFE Maps are flawed and inaccurate for many parts of our community.  They are, by FEMA’s own admission, based on incomplete data and analysis.  We’re not in a fight with FEMA, we are going to work in partnership with FEMA toward a more complete and accurate analysis. 

That was one of the messages the business administrator and I received at a meeting of Cape May County officials we attended in Trenton earlier this week.  The Governor was kind enough to make members of his staff available including the commissioner of the DEP and the head of the state’s recovery effort, Marc Ferzan. These gentlemen and FEMA officials present reinforced that we are all in this together and we need to work together. 

There continue to be indications that significant sources of grant funding will be available to assist owners with elevation projects and we will aggressively pursue any such funding.

As we have previously discussed with Council, the storm fortunately does not seriously impact the capital plan that we have all reached consensus on.  It is however one factor, along with sound decisions we have made, that make this year’s operating budget a little bit more of a challenge than last year. 

For example, as I mentioned earlier, we took advantage of favorable market conditions to permanently finance a portion of our debt earlier than originally planned.  That action increases debt service this year but saves the taxpayers significantly over the long term.

The repayment of the emergency appropriation for the storm along with the uncertainty regarding the timing of FEMA and insurance reimbursements also impact this budget.

On the positive side, the rebid of the trash and recycling contracts and the switch in health insurance carriers saves us significant dollars.

The bottom line in this proposed budget provides for an increase in the tax levy of 1 percent. If adopted as presented, this would mean the local tax levy this year will be just $292,000 more than my first budget as mayor in 2011.

This budget will come in significantly under the cap for the third year in a row. 

The budget remains lean and straight forward with no gimmicks. It maintains the same level of services that our residents, property owners and visitors expect and enjoy.  It’s a responsible plan for this year, and positions us nicely for the coming years, now that the ratable base has stabilized.

 And that was the other sound and responsible action we undertook in 2012, an extensive reassessment of much of the island for the second consecutive year.  I can’t say enough about the professionalism and hard work that the tax assessor and his staff put into this huge undertaking.  Very few assessors’ offices in the State of New Jersey would be capable of handling this challenge almost entirely in house. We’ll report on this in more detail during the budget workshops. 

The effects of this budget on individual property owners will vary due to the changes to the ratable base. 2013 will be similar to years when there has been a complete reevaluation, in that some property owners will pay less some will pay more and many will pay about the same. Again, we’ll discuss this further at the workshops.

I appreciate the efforts of the staff as I continue to challenge them to do more with less. They’ve lived up to this challenge again in developing this budget.

We look forward to the input of the City Council and the public as we move through the budget process. 

Thank you.

Mayor Jay Gillian