Monmouth County Freeholder Curley stands firm on no increases in 2010 budget
Newly elected Monmouth County Freeholder John Curley is leveraging his swing vote and will vote down the 2010 county budget on Thursday if it increases taxes. The Freeholder says, “the reports from Trenton are discerning with dramatic cuts in state aid to counties and municipalities being cut by as much as 15%.”
The Freeholder believes that under the present operation of most counties including Monmouth that sustainability of services will become impossible. The state pension system is bankrupt having been robbed and not properly funded over decades.
As financially difficult as it is for employees "my goal” states Freeholder Curley “is to protect existing jobs and benefit programs. I take great pride in our County workforce and am committed to keeping jobs and benefit packages intact.”
Curley says with the county and the country at large experiencing a minor depression, it’s imperative that the Freeholder Board do all it can to cut costs. He has created the following 23 point plan to pare down county government…
- Department heads report directly to the Freeholders and Administrator.
- Learn to live within caps, my no vote on raising budget caps stands
- Continue 5% across the board reductions with the possibility of greater cuts
- Salary freeze for all non-civil service employees, while requesting the unions to give back their fair share to the taxpayers
- Cap management and non civil service salaries and provide a wage scale similar to state employees
- Maintain a hiring freeze (layoffs through attrition)
- Initiate furloughs on County employees until the County is on more fiscal footing
- Don’t balance budgets on grants that are non-recurring funds- This is a ponzi scheme
- Don’t create new positions or departments through grant funding. Those existing departments cannot and should not be sustained
- Keep the work week at 35 hours. All departments that have gone to 40 hours should now revert back to 35 hours.
- Utilize part-time employees for mandatory functions eliminating the financial drain of benefit packages
- Mandate that employees pay 1.5% of their health benefits
o Institute a heath benefits verification plan
o All participants in health benefits program must prove any member of their family who participates meets all eligibility criteria
- Freeze equipment purchases
- Freeze the $3 million of unnecessary IT updates
- Investigate outsourcing of departments such as IT. Realize the expense of salaries, pensions, and health benefits we provide for 39 employees.
- Halt 3rd floor renovations in the Hall of Records
- Delay prosecutors building construction on Jerseyville Ave. When your income is down you don’t build a new house.
- Pass a resolution rejecting unfunded mandates from the state. The County is at the mercy of the courts and prosecutors office with mandated financial responsibility and no structural or administrative purview.
- Sheriffs Blue Ribbon panel on privatizing the County Jail, should consist of financial professionals who are qualified to do real cost benefit analysis
- Provide benefit analysis of our care facilities to determine their economic viability
- Provide a comparative analysis of park housing and private rentals to ascertain a fair and equitable compensation.
- Eliminating the extra layer of middle management bureaucracy that is now in place.
- Eliminate shared services that create deficits for the county
The Monmouth County Freeholders will meet Thursday night at 7pm at the Hall of Records in Freehold for a final public hearing on the budget and a formal vote.
Sue Linfante
