During the Monday, April 28, Township Council meeting, the 2025 municipal budget was introduced. It is expected to be passed later this month following a public hearing. Should that be the case, we will be thrilled to see it be done at a significantly earlier date than last year, when it was passed at the end of August, with nearly two thirds of the calendar year already completed.
Prior to the COVID pandemic, budgets were typically passed in early spring, introduced sometime in March and typically passed by mid-April. We obviously understand why the budget was delayed during those early pandemic years. In 2020, the township was faced with once in a lifetime challenges without clear answers or directives. In 2021, officials were waiting to see how much federal relief funding the township would receive. The 2022 budget was passed in August of that year. In 2023, however, we appeared to finally be making progress in moving the budget passage back to a more appropriate time of the year; that annual budget was passed in May.
We are happy to see that last year’s budget delay was simply a “one-off,” as was suggested at the time. Officials had said that last year they were waiting to learn about federal and state grants and aid to finalize the budget expenditures. The fact that this year’s budget was introduced in April is a welcome return; the earlier in the year that these budgets are passed, the better the town is able to plan for the year’s expenses.
We know that putting together a budget is a challenging and time consuming task involving many parties and figureheads. But we strongly believe that it is a worthwhile effort to pass the budget early in the year, and we are pleased to see the 2025 one being ready in the spring. Hopefully, this puts us on track to get back to pre-COVID times, when the budgets were introduced by late winter.
