Politics & Government

Council Starts Talks on $62M 2013 Proposed Budget

The governing body looked at line items for several municipal departments including zoning and the township court.

The Parsippany-Troy Hills Township Council began its official consideration of the proposed 2013 municipal budget Monday night at the first of three special hearings on the $62 million spending plan.

Additional hearings on the proposal will take place at Town Hall Monday, April 1 at 6 p.m. and Saturday, April 6 at 9 a.m. The public is invited to attend and to participate.

Few residents were in attendance for Monday's hearing, when the council deliberated over proposed budget line items for the municipal court; the department of planning, zoning and construction, including housing and fire prevention; and public buildings.

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The meeting was relatively short, less than two hours, and most of the council members' questions over line items dealt with issues of technology and costs for microfilm and microfiche archiving of township documents.

Councilman Jonathan Nelson asked a number of questions to the department heads present regarding the potential cost-saving possibilities and efficiency of using digital archiving or portable document files rather than the microfiche currently used by the town, a line of questioning joined at one point by member Paul Carifi Jr.

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Municipal Clerk Yancy Wazirmas explained that state law does not allow the use of PDF files (the format used, for example, by Adobe Reader and Acrobat software), but does permit documents presented as Tagged Image File Format, or TIFF, graphics.

Nelson also asked Michael Hardie, the township's purchasing director, about the half-million dollars budgeted for the maintenance of street lights. Hardie explained that most of the cost went for electricity.

The councilman wondered aloud whether Parsippany taxpayers could save money by replacing some of the electric lamps with solar-powered street lights and suggested a pllot program to see if such a move would be feasible and cost-effective.

Hardie indicated to Nelson that he would look into the matter and report back.

After the meeting, Nelson said he would recommend that the town consider a trial of solar-powered outdoor lighting.

"The township is currently budgeting $500,000 to fund the electrical bill for street lamps," he said. "The cost of retrofitting each street lamp is minimal, and with federal grant money possibly available, Parsippany would be able to withdraw our energy dependency and within two years we could reduce our electric bill to almost zero. It's a no brainer."

Ultimately, no cuts were voted on by the body on Monday, and the few residents in attendance did not question the budget items discussed.

What made the meeting notable was that it gave members of the public their first look at the preliminary budget, which was previewed in front of the council last week, but with very little in the way of detail.

As Mayor James Barberio noted at the council's March 19 meeting, the proposed budget includes the hiring of five replacement police officers, replenishment of the town's leaf bag supply and an across-the-board 2 percent salary increase for municipal white-collar workers. He said it also recognizes savings and revenue generation the town has enjoyed since the June 2012 opening of the refurbished sewer treatment plant.


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