By Philip Sean Curran
FREEHOLD – Spending by county government is scheduled to increase in 2019 based on a proposed $449.6 million budget, with state pension costs and employee salaries and wages cited as the cost drivers in the spending plan.
Monmouth County Freeholders voted 5-0 Feb. 19 to introduce a budget that calls for increasing the tax levy by half a percent compared to last year. While a breakdown was not available for the impact of the increase for each municipality, the budget will require a proposed tax levy of $305.5 million.
During the meeting, Freeholder Director Thomas A. Arnone thanked county officials for their work on the spending plan.
“I feel comfortable with the budget there,” he said. He and the rest of the board are scheduled to adopt the budget March 14. “This is probably the most fiscally responsible budget that I have had the opportunity to work with,” said deputy director Patrick Impreveduto. “The team that put this together did an absolutely marvelous job.” Overall, the budget is up $1.65 million compared to last year’s spending plan. In historical terms, county government has been spending less than it did as recently as in 2014, when the budget topped $480 million.
“We can’t control what the past was, but we can control the future,” Arnone said. “And I think the future’s bright moving forward, budget-wise and tax-wise.”
During the meeting, county finance director Craig R. Marshall outlined the budget in a presentation. Pointing to where costs are growing, he said salary and wages are up by about $987,000 compared to last year.
“This includes estimated contractual obligations and trying to make spending closer to budget,” he said.
The amount the county pays into the pension system grew by $2.2 million, he said.
In terms of other employee-related expenses, Marshall said the county has been able to control its health care costs. For 2019, he said, the county was able to reduce that amount by $1.9 million.
The county has taken steps to trim its workforce, including selling two county-run nursing homes in 2016, something Marshall touched on in his remarks.
“Through attrition, shared services, outsourcing and the sale of the care centers, we’ve brought our workforce down a total of 923 positions over the last 10 years,” he said.
By way of comparison, he showed payroll went down by $10.5 million from 2008 to 2018, from $176.8 million to $166.3 million.
“We reduced the number of employees we had, and yet, we have not reduced the services of the public,” Impreveduto said.
In a nod to the strength of its fiscal health, Monmouth is the only county in the state, and one of a handful nationwide, with a AAA bond rating from the three rating agencies, Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, Marshall said. The county has had that rating from all three of them since 1999, he said.
“Our triple A rating is very important to the freeholders and to the county,” he said.
But county officials find themselves facing labor strife with CWA Local 1087, the union representing county employees in the Division of Social Services. Contract talks between the two sides are at an impasse.
Members of the union carrying signs that read “CWA Strong” and other messages packed the meeting room.
Kimberly White, union president, said the county was able to reach a labor contract with its buildings and grounds union in six months. “And we’re asking for the same deal,” she said.
She read a statement signed by labor union leaders and other groups saying the county had reached that deal with a union made up “predominately of white men who make significantly more than the members represented by Local 1087.”
Later in her remarks, she said the department provides assistance to one in six families in the county.
“And we’ve gone above and beyond to make sure that the residents in this county get the services that they deserve and that they need,” she said.
“We have to dig into these negotiations,” Arnone said later in the meeting.
