NJ UFB – Series – Civic Parent

Understanding Montclair’s Municipal Budget: A Webinar & Teaching to Empower Taxpayers to “Follow the Public Money”

February 8, 2022February 8, 2022Brigid D'Souza

On January 26th, 2022 I joined Montclair Councilor-at-large Peter Yacobellis for a zoom webinar about the Montclair municipal (aka town) budget. My portion of the webinar was a teaching about how to engage the public budget file, which is large, complex, but ultimately a primary source for understanding how the local government both collects...

Montclair City Budgets: high-level, 6-year review

January 25, 2022January 27, 2022Brigid D'Souza

For the past few months I’ve been working with a fantastic group of advocates in Montclair to learn more about their city budget. The visual below is an outgrowth of our work. Through dialog, teaming, and learning together, these views helped us better understand revenue and expense trends within the budget. Some of these...

What is the mix of residential vs. business property in my town? (UFB-5)

January 23, 2022January 23, 2022Brigid D'Souza

This is an update to my “User Friendly Budget” series with a focus on Montclair. Your town’s user friendly budget must be posted on your town’s website (per state law here). The 5th page of the user friendly budget (“UFB-5”) provides a detailed view of your town’s tax base. This is a very informing...

What drives my property tax bill? (UFB, Page 1)

January 22, 2022January 23, 2022Brigid D'Souza

This is an update to my “User Friendly Budget” series with a focus on Montclair. Your town’s user friendly budget must be posted on your town’s website (per state law here). The first page of the user friendly budget (“UFB-1”) provides a view of the “average” tax bill in your town. The “average” tax bill is based...

Jersey City’s 2021 Municipal Budget — A postscript…and some closing notes around transparency & process improvement

September 27, 2021June 16, 2022Brigid D'Souza

This is a quick update to my 2021 municipal budget series which I wrote this summer based on the budget introduced in June 2021. On August 31st 2021, the city council approved the budget in its final form with some changes. I wanted to briefly summarize those changes and also close the series with...

Jersey City 2021 Budget: Dig into budget using keyword search

July 8, 2021June 16, 2022Brigid D'Souza

This is part of a series on the 2021 city budget. See the full series here. The 2021 budget documents are online here. In this post I want to look at the proposed 2021 Jersey City budget using three questions as a launch point: How is the budget broken down? Has the budget ever...

Abatements 701 & The “User Friendly Budget”, part 5 – Abatements (with a Jersey City Focus)

December 3, 2020June 12, 2021Brigid D'Souza

Note: the visualizations below are best viewed on a computer or tablet (vs a phone). Jersey City recently announced it was terminating an abatement on four buildings within the Beacon complex. The reason: “ownership defaulted on an obligation to retain and present employee records, city officials announced.” This is a good reminder that abatements...

The “User Friendly Budget”, Part 4b: Public Health & Public Safety (with Focus on Police) Spending in the Garden State

July 1, 2020June 16, 2022Brigid D'Souza

This is a post in a series about NJ's User Friendly Budget. My intent is to share basic analysis and insights with community as a way to encourage taxpayers to engage with this document and learn more about local public finance. Read the other posts in this series here including how to access your town's UFB and...

The “User Friendly Budget”, Part 4a: View Your Town’s Structural Spending with the “UFB-3 Appropriations Summary” Data

June 23, 2020June 16, 2022Brigid D'Souza

The “User Friendly Budget”, Part 3: the “Cover Page”, an Inventory of NJ’s 565 Municipalities, & An Overview of How UFB Data was Compiled

June 22, 2020June 16, 2022Brigid D'Souza

This is a post in a series about NJ’s User Friendly Budget. My intent is to share basic analysis and insights with community as a way to encourage taxpayers to engage with this document and learn more about local public finance. Read the other posts in this series here including how to access your town’s...

The “User Friendly Budget”, Part 2: What’s in the User Friendly Budget?

June 15, 2020June 16, 2022Brigid D'Souza

This is part of a series about the User Friendly Budget. This is a relatively short post to lay out what’s in the User Friendly Budget. I also want to share some of how I think this file can be used by taxpayers and advocates. As I explained in the first post in this...

The “User Friendly Budget”, Part 1: Intro to the Series & How to Access the UFB

June 15, 2020June 16, 2022Brigid D'Souza

Five years ago, New Jersey began mandating that every municipality* in New Jersey file a “User Friendly Budget (UFB)” as part of the annual budgeting process. This file is “user friendly” for a few reasons: The data is aggregated in unique ways that help us see the structural nature of how the city both...

Tax Abatements 601: Brighter Sunshine Mandated for NJ Abatements

September 3, 2015June 12, 2021Brigid D'Souza

Tax abatement reporting in Jersey City is finally getting more transparent. Two distinct authoritative bodies have mandated changes that require Jersey City (and other cities) to get onboard the transparency train. This news should come as a relief to taxpayers since abatements now constitute over 20% of Jersey City’s annual revenue yet have been sharply criticized by the NJ Comptroller as being too opaque...