Cutting Half of a Hundredth of a Percent of the Budget is Too Hard?

If you ever wonder why I get pretty hard-line about tax increases, you don't need to look any farther than Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo.

Right now, [Essex] county collects 1 cent per $100 of assessed property and DiVincenzo has asked voters to support a referendum that would increase that amount to 1.5 cents per $100 of assessed property. For the owner of a house valued at $100,000, the contribution to the open space trust fund would be $15. . . .

"Our penny has done so much," he said. "If you like what we have done in the last 4 1/2 years, please support us. We need that extra half a penny."

Don't get me wrong. Taxes at the local level are good and necessary for some things, and that includes parks. And parks are important for our quality of life. Elizabeth Moore of the Star-Ledger lists some of the things this money has been used for:

. . . restoring 21 park buildings, modernizing 35 basketball and tennis courts, upgrading 17 baseball and softball fields, improving seven walking tracks and football/soccer fields. . . . [also to] build the county's Environmental Center in Roseland, rebuild Garibaldi Hall,... renovate the Turtle Back Zoo's dining pavilion and other habitats in West Orange, plant 2,000 new cherry trees at Branch Brook Park in Newark and Belleville, and purchase Kip's Castle.

These are legitimate local concerns, and we should democratically decide whether to fund these projects or not.

We currently pay one one-hundredth of a percent of our assessed value to fund these things. Small number, right? DiVincenzo wants to raise our property taxes by what he calls an "extra half a penny" -- just half of a hundredth of a percent. Sounds good -- ignore for the moment that he's really asking us to increase his parks budget by fifty percent -- because it's a teeny tiny percentage increase in actual dollars, right?

But that raises a question: if it takes only this teeny tiny percentage to fund the parks that contribute so much to our quality of life, why can't we squeeze the teeny tiny percentage out of something else? Are there no inefficiencies to squeeze out of government?

DiVincenzo can't cut something in his County budget by one half of one hundredth of a percent to make room for this new expenditure?

Why exactly is that too hard?

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