Taxes & Spending
In 2002, the total tax levy for Hoboken was a mere $17 million. By 2008, Mayor Roberts had doubled that, to $34 million. And now, under management by Trenton, our tax levy is a whopping $65 million.
Hoboken taxes too much, and spends too much. It’s just as simple as that.
As of 2008, the average property tax bill in Hoboken is more than $7,000.
That’s up by a third just since 2005 – this, despite one of our very own residents being Governor, having campaigned four years ago on a promise to cut property taxes by 40 percent during his first term.
In just one year – from 2007 to 2008 – the average tax bill in Hoboken rose by 23 percent.
In the entire state of New Jersey, with 566 municipalities, there are only two municipalities where property taxes rose faster.
But that’s not the worst part.
No, the worst part is that, because of our city political leaders’ massive mismanagement, we’ve lost the right to control our own city finances. Instead, the big-spending, high-taxing men and women who run the state government in Trenton have seen fit to take charge of Hoboken’s finances.
That’s right – Jon Corzine’s administration, the administration that’s raised taxes by $9 billion and spent like it was going out of style, thinks that Hoboken needs fiscal discipline.
Pot, meet kettle.
Not surprisingly, Trenton’s decision to take over our city finances hasn’t done much for our financial health.
In fact, it led to one of the largest one-quarter property tax increases anyone’s ever seen around here – a 47 percent jump in just one quarter.
At either end of life, property taxes that high make it difficult for us and for our neighbors:
Property taxes that high are forcing fixed-income retirees to leave the homes they’ve loved and lived in for their entire lives, and move to states where they can better afford a decent quality of life.
Property taxes that high make it virtually impossible for young families to buy that first starter home, and prevent them from taking advantage of one of the most secure routes to eventual financial security – home equity.
We simply must find ways to reduce the property tax burden on our residents, or Hoboken will be changed forever.
But you cannot get taxes under control unless and until you get spending under control.
So let’s take a quick look at Hoboken spending.
Did you know that seven of the ten highest-paid public safety officials in all of New Jersey happen to be on the Hoboken payroll?
Think of the enormity of that simple declaration: There are 566 municipalities in the state. Each has multiple senior officials in the public safety sphere, which means that there are literally thousands upon thousands of senior officials in the public safety sphere statewide.
But all but three of them share something in common – they all take less money from taxpayers than do Hoboken’s seven most highly paid fire and police officials.
I’m all for Hoboken having excellent public safety officials.
But they should come at reasonable cost.
It makes no sense to employ a chief of police, for instance, who is compensated by our taxpayers more handsomely than is the Police Commissioner of the City of New York.
Just think about that – Hoboken vs. New York.
Which city’s chief of police has a tougher job? Shouldn’t he be the guy who gets the better compensation package?
This kind of ridiculous spending is just one example of Hoboken’s spending problem.
How, then, to fix Hoboken’s fiscal house, with a minimum of dislocation?
Begin with a hiring freeze, followed by a gradual reduction in the size of the city workforce, through attrition. Until we can reassess and renegotiate city contracts – including, especially, city contracts with public employee unions – departments and agencies of the city government are going to have to learn to do more with less.
Then conduct a line-by-line review of the city’s budget – but not with the city’s “experts” (they’re the ones who got us in trouble with Trenton, after all). Instead, hire an outside accounting firm to help city officials figure out exactly what the city’s assets and liabilities are, and then figure out how to economize.
Enact a city-wide Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR), with a mandate that taxes and spending cannot increase on an annual basis by any more than the rate of inflation plus population growth; if taxes collected result in revenue totals larger than that needed to fund spending at the proper level, the excess – the surplus – will be automatically returned to taxpayers.