You indulge in restaurants, travel, parties, gifts, and concert tickets, and then discover you don’t have enough money left for necessities like your mortgage payment or groceries.

What should you do?

Incur more debt? Make your spouse take a second job to cover necessities?

That’s what our Mayor and some Borough Council members seem to think.

Faced with an urgent need for two or three new fire trucks to replace a dangerously aging fleet, they continued to prioritize lower priority expenses, like public art, street decorations, concerts, parades, celebrations, tennis courts, and the Stanley Center.

Now they’re tying to tell us that the Borough can afford the desperately needed ladder truck only because the Borough is moonlighting as a real estate developer to bring in new PILOT income from the giant Ivy apartment project on River Road.

That’s the thrust of the April 28 budget presentation, an extended infomercial for PILOTS, starting at approx. minute 1:39:30 here:

https://chathamborough.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=363 and in the PowerPoint show here: https://www.chathamborough.org/forms-documents/forms/financial-documents/2025-2/2847-chatham-borough-2025-budget-introduction-presentation/file

That might make sense if the Mayor & Council were required to place a higher priority on the fun stuff. But it isn’t. The Council’s highest priority must be public safety, including adequate fire trucks. The fun stuff must come second.

At that April 28 meeting, Mayor & Council ignored all that, and tried to justify the Ivy PILOT deal (and warm you up for the next PILOT project in the pipeline) by claiming a good chunk of the revenue will be put aside for the ladder truck.

Don’t fall for that.

In fact, the PILOT payments go into the Borough’s general fund, along with revenue from various other sources, including your property taxes.

Because money is fungible, there is no way Mayor Council can say if a certain dollar came from property taxes, or PILOT revenue, or some other source, like the ECLC rents or the parking fees.

Pretending they can is pure spin.

Simple fact is, every time they raise spending, you lose the tax break that the PILOT payments could afford.

Time to tell our Mayor & Council to do the right thing:

First, take care of absolute necessities, like the ladder fire truck. before considering secondary expenses and discretionary items like public art, concerts, parades, celebrations, decorations, and the Stanley Center.

Second, the Council should NOT use the PILOT revenue as an excuse to increase spending. Use it to reduce the tax rate.

Third, if the Council wants extra goodies, let the voters decide whether or not to sacrifice the tax break to get those goodies.

After all, it’s your money they’re spending. Find out how the Mayor & Council aim to spend it while there’s still time to influence the outcome.

Stop by the next Council meeting, May 12 at 7:30 pm, Borough Hall, 54 Fairmount Avenue. You don’t need to speak.