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Local officials rail against NJ Highlands Water Tax

Seek waiver for Highlands Region municipalities

Suburban Trends
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
By Rebecca Scanlon
Staff Writer

Local officials are critical of the Highlands Council’s desire to ask New Jersey residents to pay a water fee that would dedicate money toward protecting the state’s water-generating lands.

Several mayors in the Suburban Trends area said that while the idea of dedicating money to fund Highlands’ preservation is good in theory, imposing a fee on residents without dedicating funds for tax relief in the Highlands would not win support.

“I couldn’t support a measure unless it contained a waiver for (Highlands) communities,” said Walter Davison, mayor of Ringwood, which is completely within the area protected by the Highlands Act.

This means that Ringwood, as well as the completely preserved West Milford, cannot reap the tax income that would come from full development of their land. While it has been talked about, financial relief for this loss has never become permanent for towns like Ringwood and West Milford.

“The proposed resolution, as it is written, would get no support” from him, he said, adding that he had not discussed it with the Ringwood Borough Council.

The matter would likely be discussed at the council’s June work session, Davison said.

The state’s Senate Environmental Committee discussed Senate Concurrent Resolution no. 88 at its May 8 meeting. Senator Robert Smith (D-17) who also sponsored the Highlands Act, introduced the matter.

If the resolution passes, voters will face a question on the November ballot as to whether or not they are willing to pay a fee to dedicate funds for open space and protecting the water source, said Eileen Swan, executive director of the Highlands Council. The Highlands Council is a 15-member board charged with carrying out the provisions of the Highlands Act, legislation aimed at preserving the quality and quantity of the region’s water resource. The council would then endeavor to educate voters about the source of their water, Swan said.

According to the Highlands Council, the proposal calls for a November voter referendum to authorize a water fee of 40 cents per 1,000 gallons. The council said that the fee would cost the average homeowners using 80,000 gallons a year about $32 a year and would raise about $150 million each year for conservation and protection of the water-producing Highlands.

“This would ensure that those who benefit from the protection of the Highlands would contribute to the cost of preserving the region’s resources,” stated the recent letter to New Jersey mayors from John Weingart on behalf of the Highlands Water Protection and Planning Council.

“This isn’t a Highlands issue, it’s a statewide issue,” Swan said. “Why would the burden be carried by only the residents of the region?”

The Highlands Council has asked every municipality to support its resolution.

Local Officials Talk

“I believe in preserving open space,” said West Milford Mayor Bettina Bieri. “But that kind of funding would not benefit West Milford.”

Bieri said that if the money was used for purchasing open space, West Milford is completely within the Highlands preservation area, so no land could be purchased because all of it is already protected.

“They should’ve set aside a portion to send back to the municipalities,” Bieri said.

Highlands towns like West Milford were providing half of the state’s water supply and residents were protecting the source long before the Highlands Act came along, so why should residents now pay to protect it?, Bieri asked.

West Milford Council Joe Smolinski agreed with Bieri.

“West Milford residents shouldn’t be paying for protection of our own land with our own tax dollars,” Smolinski said. “We’re looking for property tax relief since we’re a provider of clean and pure water.”

“In my opinion, the state is out of control,” Riverdale Mayor William Budesheim said. “They have no concept of the effects of these decisions they’re making.”

In a May 19 letter responding to the council’s request, Budesheim asked why the Highlands Council “disingenuously hide(s) behind the euphemistic idiom ‘fee’ instead of referring to it as the tax that it really is,” and added, “Charging the name of a tax does not make it any less painful.”

The estimation that a household would pay “only” $32 a year, Budesheim said, amounts to yet another fee that would compound with several others.

“They keep putting these ‘only, only, onlys’ on and it adds up,” he said. “What about the price of gas? Add $32 for water on top of that. Our wages can’t keep up with it.”

Bloomingdale Mayor William Steenstra said that he concurred with Budesheim’s comments.

“I just think we have so many taxes,” Steenstra said. “they over-burden the taxpayers, especially those already in the Highlands area.”

Steenstra said that he was surprised to read in the literature that the Highlands council distributed that all towns using public water, including those in the Highlands region, would be taxed and saw nothing about funds being dedicated for property tax relief in the Highlands.

“I thought originally that was what was proposed,” he said. “I was surprised that us, who protect the water, would now have to pay for the water.”

Steenstra said the proposal is especially hard to swallow after the state took away $271,000 in municipal aid.

“It’s like, ‘I just picked your pocket and now you owe me,’” he said.

Butler Mayor Joseph Heywang said that while he would support charging a fee to cities and towns in other parts of the state where the water is taken, charging local residents a fee is unfair. He added that he thought it was not the right solution for protecting the water producing lands of northern New Jersey.

“They haven’t figured out how to fund the Highlands,” Heywang said.

Wanaque Mayor Dan Mahler said that he hadn’t had a chance to look closely at the proposal, and he was unclear as to how the funds would be allocated.

He said that he would only be in favor of a scenario in which cities and towns outside the water producing areas were charged for receiving the water and some money was given to the towns from which the water came.

“These towns (that host reservoirs) should also get a fee for being a host town,” said the mayor of a borough in which about one third of the land is owned by the Wanaque reservoir.

Skylands CLEAN Inc., a northern New Jersey environmental group, also supported the notion that the towns protecting half of the state’s water resources on a daily basis deserve financial support.

“Open space is a great investment for any community, especially since development (specifically residents development) often costs more in services that it provides in tax revenue. And it is important to preserve these lands to protect our water supply,” said Robin O’Hearn, Skylands CLEAN executive director.

“Communities totally in the Preservation Area, however, have long argued that a portion of this proposed water tax revenue should be returned to them to provide tax relief,” she said. “I would like to see communities like Ringwood and West Milford participate in crafting this legislation so their concerns are addressed.”

Highlands Council responds

Swan said that the Highlands council is not only encouraging towns to support its proposal with a resolution, but to specify in that resolution the desire for funds to be directed back to residents of the Highlands region, which she said would be part of a companion bill.

“They should put their concerns into a resolution,” she said.

The Highlands Council hopes the resolution will take the burden off of the residents of the Highlands Region and make all state residents responsible for protecting the Highlands.

“The burden of protecting water sources would fall on the whole state,” she said.

Copyright © North Jersey Media Group

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