‘Did we say that?’

Do candidates really believe the boasts and claims they include in their campaign advertisements and mailers?

Or, do candidates’ election-time assertions tend to have no conviction behind them?

Middlesex Borough voters can ponder those questions given the recent handling of the 2024 municipal budget by Mayor Jack Mikolajczyk and the Borough Council. The spending plan was approved by a 5-1 vote on May 14. Councilman Jeremiah Carnes was the lone dissenter.

For the second straight year, the all-Republican governing body is imposing a roughly 7.5% municipal tax increase on property owners. Along with the tax hike comes revisionist history. The new narrative runs contrary to a supposed “accomplishment” that three GOP candidates touted last fall.

While campaigning at that time, Mikolajczyk and current councilmen Michael Conahan and Kevin Dotey, circulated a political mailing. It explained the recent years’ record of Republican leadership. Never mind that Dotey had not served on the governing body since 2019 and then it was in his prior political life as a Democrat.

Not just mentioned, but mentioned first under the mailer’s Recent Accomplishments, is “2021 and 2022 – 0% municipal tax increase.”

Last fall’s 0% tax boast, however, no longer fits. The new narrative is that taxes need to be raised and a $200 increase for the average homeowner isn’t really a hardship.

The mayor’s newly revised version is that it may have been a mistake to keep municipal taxes flat for two years. “In my opinion, to have two years at zero was not the best way to go but was appropriate at that time,” Mikolajczyk said on May 14.

The two years in question were 2021 and 2022, a time when many Central Jersey governing bodies were keeping tax increases as close to zero as possible as the economy fought to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Funny how what was touted on last fall’s campaign literature, giving the picture that the candidates are fiscal hawks, is now considered “not the best way to go.”

“From where I come from it’s Management 101,” the mayor said of budgeting. “You take a step back, look at all the expenses, and figure out what you need to do, and you try to keep it as reasonable as possible without cutting your own throat.”

Mikolajczyk also tried a bit of deflection regarding the 2024 tax hike, referring to the effect of “Bidenomics.”

“I cannot control the economy and I cannot control Bidenomics,” Mikolajczyk said. “Everything else is going up way more than 4%.”

The mayor now uses averaging to justify two years of tax increases that are twice the inflation rate. If you take those two years, and average them with the two zero increase years, the net comes to about a 4% annual increase, Mikolajczyk noted.

In this new math, local officials get to pick and choose what figures taxpayers should consider. Last fall’s mailer did not mention a 5.47% increase in 2020 or last year’s 7.5% hike. That 5.47% rise four years ago was imposed only a couple of months after the pandemic’s outbreak, a time when many businesses had shut their doors temporarily or experienced severe revenue loss.

The new-found inconsistency over the merits of a 0% increase was noted by former Council President Jim Eodice in a recent Facebook comment.

Eodice wrote: “Every one of them ran for office with ‘Zero tax increase’ out in front, and now it was a bad thing?”

Certainly, there are current economic difficulties on the national level. But it’s no comfort when local officials raise taxes higher than the inflation rate for the second straight year. 

With the price of food and other necessities increased, belt-tightening on the local level would have been welcomed. Instead, the mayor and council adopted the attitude that everything else has gotten expensive, so why shouldn’t the borough also stick its hand deeper into your pocket?

Officials in other Central Jersey towns and school districts have realized that’s not a prudent position to take. Most have adopted budgets that call for 4% to 5% increases or less. In one municipality – Long Hill Township – the governing body sent its budget back for revisions after it came in with a 5% tax hike.

Middlesex Borough taxpayers can only wonder what’s next. Zero percent tax increases – once proudly mentioned – are now considered an error in judgement. A $200 tax increase is not viewed as problematic, even though it will likely be double that (or more) after the local schools and Middlesex County add their cut.

Constituents should question whether there’s anything else on the 2023 Republican candidates’ mailer that’s also open to re-interpretation.

Multiple borough departments are increasing their expenditures by 10% or more in 2024. That’s not the fiscal conservatism touted at this year’s reorganization meeting. The next time you receive a political mailer, don’t read it. It might only cause agita at some point in the future.

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