South Brunswick Municipal Offices to have Shorter Public Hours

As a result of staffing losses due to budget cuts over the last few years in the township, certain municipal office windows will have new hours beginning this month.

Effective on June 15, the public windows for Building and Code, the Municipal Clerk's Office, the Health Department, Planning and Zoning, Affordable Housing, the Tax Assessor, Engineering, and Fire Safety will be open from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

"We need to give our employees the chance to finish paperwork that's piling up due to the cutback in personnel," said Township Manager Matthew Watkins.  "There are impacts (to the cutbacks).  While we want to provide as much services as possible, we do need to take care of this paperwork."

Township Clerk Barbara Nyitrai said certain filings have to be done within seven days, therefore the new hours are needed to allow the staff to get through much of the work that has slowly backed up due to staff cuts.

"If (the backup) continues we're going to have much bigger issues," she said at last week's Council meeting.  

 Over the last five years, South Brunswick was down 56 positions from layoffs and attrition, which reduced the township workforce from 295 people to 239 people.