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The governing body on Aug. 1 will vote on the 2012 budget it debuted in February. The proposed spending plan bears a 3.2-percent tax increase.

After months of waiting, the city last week learned it will receive $3.5 million in transitional aid. The municipality introduced its budget in February, but could not adopt it until it received transitional aid numbers.

Asbury Park is a state-designated transitional aid city, meaning it receives additional funds from the state each year. About five years ago, the city was receiving $12 million annually, city manager Terence Reidy [pictured above] said at the July 11 council meeting.

“Since [Governor Chris] Christie’s been in office, and I think appropriately so, there has been a program to work with cities and find ways for cities to generate revenue so the state can decrease aid,” Reidy said.

This year, the state evaluated all 12 transitional aid cities and rewarded four — including Asbury Park — for good financial practices by making some of those cities’ funding more permanent. Now, $6 million of Asbury Park’s transitional aid has been changed to regular state aid, Reidy said, meaning the city will no longer need to apply for that money annually.

The city is receiving about $900,000 less in transitional and regular aid from the state this year than it did the previous year, keeping up the trend of an approximately $1 million decrease each year, Reidy said.

To make up for this loss in funding, the city will pull some revenue from the beach utility and the parking utility, external auditor Dave Kaplan said, as well as some grants.

The city’s tax rate under the proposed budget is 11.6 cents per $100 of assessed property valuation, city chief financial officer Juan Uribe said, which is a 3.2-percent increase over last year. Last year’s tax rate bore a 3.08-percent increase over the previous year.

The 3.2-percent increase complies with state-mandated tax levy caps, Uribe said. Although the state established a 2-percent local tax levy cap in 2010, some expenditures — such as contractually mandated health benefits or pay increases — are exempt from the cap.

The average home in Asbury Park is valued at $180,000, Uribe said, and will pay municipal property taxes in the amount of $5,756 this year if the proposed budget is approved by both the city’s governing body and the state Division of Local Government Services.

The city will hold a public hearing and final vote on the spending plan at the Aug. 1 council meeting, which begins at 7 p.m. in city hall.

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