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Residents press Perth Amboy council on emergency temporary appropriation and delayed budget
Summary
At the June 10 meeting residents challenged R226, a $670,510 emergency temporary appropriation to extend the 2026 temporary budget, and pressed the council for a timeline for the missing full municipal budget; officials said temporary appropriations are routine and promised a budget timeline by next week.
Orlando Perez, a resident of 278 Madison Avenue, told the Perth Amboy City Council on June 10 that the emergency temporary appropriation on the agenda raised serious concerns about municipal finances, saying: "You don't have a budget. . . Where's it coming from?" Perez urged greater transparency after recent large appropriations and asked how the city could approve spending without an adopted full budget.
Council President and other officials responded that the temporary-appropriation process is a standard, short-term mechanism that allows the city to make limited expenditures before a full municipal budget is adopted. "The money isn't coming from nowhere. The money is coming in," a council official said, adding that an IT cost added between the initial agenda and the meeting produced a change in the appropriation amount.
Resident requests for more budget detail prompted several speakers to ask CFO Miss Goldie to explain the statutory budget process; Miss Goldie and other administrators said the local budget law prescribes the procedure used across New Jersey and that staff, auditors and department heads are meeting frequently to prepare a responsible budget. A council speaker said the administration expects to deliver either at the next meeting or the following meeting and would provide a specific timeline by the end of next week.
Why this matters: R226 would temporarily extend the city's 2026 spending authority by $670,510; residents told the council that repeated emergency appropriations have created worry about long-term fiscal control. Officials said temporary appropriations do not alter the requirement that the governing body publicly approve expenditures and that the full budget will be presented for review.
What happened next: The public comment period closed without a recorded vote on the resolution during the session transcript. Officials committed to a timeline and to returning budget documents to the council in an upcoming meeting.
