The Struggle to Find 2026 Scotch Plains Budget Numbers

So if you are a Scotch Plains resident searching  top line numbers for the ’26 budget or even the 2025 budget, you might hit a snag.

The same is true if you wanted to research resolutions passed in 2025 or 2026.

Scotch Plains didn’t include even the basic top line budget numbers on its 03/10 agenda when it introduced the budget and, in trying to access the information on the website, we found a really strange set up in place for accessing public budget documents.  In order to find out what is even available we needed to request approval (that we’re still waiting on) to access budget documents, resolutions and ordinances.  

Unlike other municipalities, Scotch Plains does not appear to even make resolutions or ordinances on the agenda available for review prior to the meeting.

To make matters worse, the most recent folder containing those items was labeled as 2024.

I then went to the minutes to see if I could find anything there and discovered that 2026 Council Meeting Minute were not yet uploaded – for the last three months.

As a last resort, I tried two deep searches using ChatGPT and Gemini and they were unable to locate any detailed information as well.

That means residents looking for one of the most basic categories of public records, government budgets, were left digging through a system that either did not provide the records or did not provide them in a reasonably accessible way.

This is especially important as Budgets are set to be approved over the next few weeks.

So we went ahead and submitted an OPRA request and found that the form was basically an image and did not allow a user to fill in the fields with information.  

In my OPRA request, I attempted to inform the Township of these issues:

“Please provide the 2025 Adopted Budget for Scotch Plains along with the Introductory Budget approved by the Council 03/10/2026. Please understand I m not asking for the final budget, but the introductory budget approved by the council on 03/10/2026. As this was voted on by the council it is no longer pre-decisional.  

I am not required to use a form, however I tried and your form is saved as a image making it impossible to type on.

I have attempted to access the adopted budget through the township website however that requires approval (which is strange for a public document) and unlike most municipalities, Scotch Plains shares no information about the introductory budget on the agenda.  I attempted to look at the resolutions and ordinances section but those don’t appear to be updated – the last folder is from 2024.  Please note under NJ law, budget documents are granted immediate access.”

We got a prompt reply indicating that we would receive a response within 7 days, however, no information about our concerns was provided.

So what should have been a summary on how the 2026 numbers compare to the 2024 ACFR and 2025 Adopted became a story of an access fortress.

And while Scotch Plains got a high mark on budget efficiency in our 2024 ACFR Municipality comparison, it is on the opposite side of that list when it comes to accessibility and budget transparency.