State Aid to Narrow Madison Budget Gap

Madison will receive $808,529 in municipal aid from the state for the 2011-12 budget year, the same as in 2010-11.

Borough officials say the funds will help narrow the current budget gap, but that larger, more complicated issues remain that won't be easily remedied with short-term funding from the state.

"We were anticipating a 25% cut [in state aid], so this is about a $200,000 savings toward closing the existing $860,000 budget gap," said Madison Mayor Mary-Anna Holden. "What is also interesting are the business-attraction incentives that would play nicely into attracting more tenants at Giralda Farms, which is a mini-pharma campus."

Council member Robert Conley called the state aid "good news," but recalled aid as recently as 2007 totaled almost $1.4 million, which "at that level our gap would almost be closed."

"The bigger issues are increasing healthcare and pension costs, each of which have it's own set of issues, one of which isn't controlled by any borough or local government," said council member Don Links. "I believe the Madison Council will continue to explore for the long term difficult solutions to our budget problems and not choose the Band-Aid fix which would be the simple answer. We must control our expenditures when they are ours to control and we must make our needs known in Trenton for the expenditures we do not control. We need pension reform, but we need it fair to both sides.

"The taxpayer in New Jersey can no longer continue to pay the  increasing higher and higher bill every year. We need  bipartisan legislation and we need it now."

The council will receive a revised budget proposal at its Feb. 28 meeting.