IRVINGTON, NJ — Irvington NAACP President Merrick Harris picked Labor Day to chime in about the township’s recent fiscal shortfalls that have led to a $3.25 million budget deficit in 2015, $2.4 million deficits in 2016 and 2017, and the 1.5-percent property tax increase in the $109,930,685.08 Calendar Year 2017 Municipal Budget.
“Our problem with our town is we don’t produce a budget in the beginning of the year and, if we did, a lot of that could be curtailed,” said Harrison on Monday, Sept. 4. “So they’re going out and spending money that we don’t have. They were talking about giving furloughs or deferments or whatever. Not only this administration, but other administrations in the past had problems producing budgets on time.”
Harris said fiscal discipline is the only way to fix Irvington’s apparent financial woes and take the undue burden of tax increases off the backs of taxpayers struggling to make ends meet.
“I’m not even sure that they have produced a budget this year yet,” said Harris. “I think that they don’t produce a budget on purpose, so they can spend whatever they want. I think the reason why they aren’t paying the bills is they don’t know where the money is coming from or going to, in order to pay it.”
According to Municipal Council President David Lyons, the council did produce a Calendar Year 2017 budget that was sent down to Trenton for state approval.
“Not only did we send in a budget, we sent in an annual financial statement also,” said Lyons on Monday, July 10. “Everything has been submitted and now we’re just waiting on the state for approval. Last year that was on the council. They wanted to rush it and, when they rushed it, the budget wasn’t finished. This year, we wanted to take our time and make sure that it was completed before we sent this out.”
Harris said a recent incident involving the Irvington Fire Department perfectly illustrates his point about the current state of the township’s finances. He said he recently discovered that, when one of the tires on a fire truck blew out and needed to be replaced, the firefighters had to call four different service providers before they found one willing to fix the problem.
According to Harris, the first three repair companies the firefighters called refused to take the job because, “they said Irvington never pays its bills.”
Alex Lima, president of FMBA Local 14, declined to comment, in light of the ongoing Internal Affairs investigation into all firefighters’ employment histories. According to FMBA state union officials, the Local 14 union has already spent $15,000 defending its members from the Vauss administration Internal Affairs probe.
According to former police Chief Michael Chase, Irvington is doing the same regarding medical bills.
“The township has not been paying medical bills or putting them off for years because, if they paid them all on time, that would add up to a million dollars,” said Chase on Sunday, Sept. 3. “The town doesn’t have the money to pay the bills, so they don’t pay them. But the problem is those bills start to pile up as time goes by and it ends up being too much to pay off all at once.”
Lyons has also previously gone on the record, when it comes to paying municipal employees’ outstanding medical bills and associated health care costs.
“The medical stuff should be separate and apart because, when you start talking about it, it all comes under the umbrella of the township,” said Lyons on Tuesday, Aug. 15. “We have a third party insurance carrier and the council has an Insurance Commission, but I’ve found that there’s no one on it. We need to be aware of what’s going on with the insurance and the only way we can do that is if we have somebody on that commission. That’s what I’m planning to do.”
Vauss did not have any comment on the matter.
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