The Borough of Ramsey has an annual budget of $29 million per year.

An OPRA (Open Public Records Act) request was filed regarding the lack of a plan by the Borough to pay off the $17-20 million debt (above the annual budget) consistently held over the past 7 to 8 years. 

The response to the OPRA (screenshot of email below) was that “the Borough has not issued long term debt at this time.  We are utilizing one year Bond Anticipation notes.  Each year interest is paid off as well as principal payments made on the outstanding ordinance.”  Consequently, the remaining unpaid principal has to be refinanced into new one-year notes each year.  And there has been a dramatic increase in interest rates paid on these bonds in just the past few years, from .338% in 2021 to 3.89% on the current note.

By not locking in lower rates when they were available, the Borough paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional interest. 

See text highlighted in yellow, below – their response to our OPRA request:

The current Mayor and Council will be long gone before the Borough can repay the debt they have gotten us into.

Before this administration took office we never carried this kind of bond debt. Prior administrations were very mindful of not burdening the town with debt.

The Borough has consistently been carrying $17,000,000-$20,000,000 in bond debt which gets rolled over yearly.

Scroll down for details of 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021. These spreadsheets came straight from Borough Hall via OPRA (Open Public Records Act) requests.

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