Police, Pensions, and Public Works: The Cost of Running Westfield in 2026

Westfield’s ’26 introductory budget, which was approved in late March, hits ~60M which is an increase from the ’25 adopted budget and the most recent completed audit in 2024.  As we’ve mentioned in every article on Municipal budgets so far, recent changes to state law extended the audit deadline to August which isn’t very helpful when you consider that municipalities approve their budgets in the spring.  The Audit is a better baseline as it is a real record of what a municipality spent v. an adopted budget which is simply the plan for the year ahead. The good thing about Westfield is that, like Berkeley Heights we have the 2026 detail.

The 2026 introduced budget comes in at ~59.6M, up from the 2025 adopted and the 2024 audited spend.

Westfield ’26 2026 budget breaks down at $42.5M within CAPS, $14.3M excluded from CAPS and $2.79M in uncollected tax reserves.

The bill gets paid through $32.5M raised through taxes alongside a minimum library tax of ~4M.

Comparing this to the ’24 ACFR we begin to see a similar concentration across a few categories….

Police operations over $8M (salaries and other expenses)
Fire close to $5M
Public Works at ~ $5.7M (salaries and operational cost)
Group insurance breaks $5.4M

When you add these up it represents a large share of Westfield’s operational costs.

Then there’s the pension and other obilgations (Police and Firemen’s Retirement, Public Employees Retirement, and Social Security total to about $5.8M which aren’t optional and will continue to go up over time.

Lastly, there’s the less visible obligation – the ’24 ACFR shows ~$4.9M tied to Sewer Maintenance (Rahway Valley Sewer Authority) along with another big chunk to library funding with the ’26 budget adding to the latter.

The cards below show the movement on 17 indicators across the ’24 Audit, the ’25 Adopted and the ’26 Introductory.

Source Material

Read More : The 21st District Face-Off: How Seven Towns Stack Up on Per-Household Spending