Guest column from former Councilman and 2014 mayoral candidate Jim Bean.
I compared the actual revenues and expenses between the 2010 and 2017 budgets and wanted to share the numbers with you.
When the municipal budget is put together there are two columns; projected revenues and projected expenses. As the year goes by and the town collects and spends, these numbers are filled into the column called actual revenues and actual expenses. These are the real numbers of what Belmar collected and what Belmar spent. I took the 2010 actual revenue and expenses and compared them with 2017 actual revenue and expenses. The General Ledger accounts match up, so it is an apples to apples comparison.
I removed the so called “surplus” being added to both year’s revenues. The surplus is actually how a municipality balances the projected and actual accounts. It comes from last year’s projected column minus the actual’s column. This difference is moved to the following year while the expense difference stays in the budget as part of the “surplus”. Confusing? yes. The surplus changes year to year and I felt it was immaterial. I am comparing the actual real spending and taxing. Yes there is some money there in the surplus account but it has to stay there as part of the budgeting process for the following year.
The first tab in the 2010-2017 Budget Comparison excel sheet is the actual revenues comparison,the second tab is the actual expenses. At the top is the amount both increased for all utilities and the municipal account in 7 years. The 3rd tab is the changes in amounts for everything.
In the 2010 to 2013 revenues and expenses sheet – tab 1 is the revenue for these dates and tab 2 is expenses for these dates.
In the 2014 to 2017 revenues and expenses sheet – tab 1 is the revenue for these dates and tab 2 is expenses for these dates.
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In 7 years…
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Municipal account revenues increased by $520,219 and expenses increase $1,753,252, leaving a deficit of $1,233,032.
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Water & Sewer account revenues increased by $133,242 and expenses increases by $502,275, leaving a deficit of $369,032.
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Beach Utility revenues increased by $419,423 and expenses increases by $1,218,825 leaving a deficit of $799,402. Please note: to be fair, the beach utility has a expense increase of $536,489 because of the bonds and interest from Sandy. This is shown in the expenses worksheet. When this is removed from the equation it leaves a deficit of $262,913.00.
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Parking utility revenues increased by $146,257 and expenses increases by $10,972 leaving a real surplus of $135,284.
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All of these added together leaves a $2,266,183 hole in the budget.
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Final analysis…
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Belmar and its utilities is spending $2,266,183 more then they were 7 years ago with no revenue increases to cover the costs.
There is your no tax increase in 7 years.
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For your reference:
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These are the 2 excel sheets I pulled the numbers from for the budget comparison. You can use them to check my math and my methodology.
