Five different bodies tax your property. The Township Council controls about a fifth of the bill.
At the Aug. 24 Township Council meeting, a resident running for council told the room that East Brunswick property taxes were headed up “about 7% or more” this year.
Council President Dana Zimbicki answered a few minutes later: “The municipal portion of our tax is about 1% increase and has been that for about the last eight years.”
Both statements can be accurate, because they are about two different numbers. One describes the whole bill. The other describes the slice the Township Council actually sets.
You don’t pay one “East Brunswick tax”
The single figure at the bottom of your tax bill is really five separate charges, collected together by the township and passed along to the bodies that levy them.
Using the township’s own audited figures for 2025 and the adopted municipal levy, here is roughly how a dollar of East Brunswick property tax divides:
| What it funds | 2025 amount | Share of the bill |
|---|---|---|
| Schools — set by the Board of Education | $152,468,788 | ~63% |
| Municipal purposes — set by the Township Council | $46,990,372 | ~19% |
| Middlesex County — set by the county commissioners | $35,780,698 | ~15% |
| Fire districts — separately elected boards | $5,718,490 | ~2.4% |
| Municipal open space — set by the Township Council | $387,906 | ~0.2% |
Five charges, four separate authorities. The Board of Education, the county and your fire district each set their own numbers, and none of them answer to the Township Council. The council sets two of the five lines — municipal purposes and open space — which together come to a little under a fifth of the total.
Which fire district applies depends on where in town you live.
What each one did this year
The township: up 0.99%. The adopted municipal levy came in at $44,012,350, against $43,580,907 the year before. The first draft would have raised it about 3%; council members sent departments back to look again, and the township identified $875,448 in additional revenue, bringing it down to just under one percent.
Middlesex County: no increase. The county adopted its 2026 budget without raising the county tax levy.
The schools: up 6.16%, or roughly $9.56 million, according to the Board of Education’s budget.
Fire districts: varies. Each district sets its own levy, so this line depends on your address.
One term worth pinning down, because it causes confusion: these are changes in the levy — the total dollars each body raises through property taxes — not in the tax rate. The rate is calculated afterward, by dividing the levy across the town’s total assessed value.
Why the 1% figure is accurate but doesn’t describe your bill
This is the heart of it.
The Township Council controls roughly one-fifth of your property tax bill. Holding its own levy to about 1% does not hold your total bill to 1% — it holds about 19 cents of every dollar to 1%. The other 81 cents are set by people the council does not control.
Weight each body’s change by its share of the bill — this is an Eyes on EB calculation, using the audited 2025 shares above — and the picture is straightforward:
- The school increase contributes roughly 3.9 percentage points of growth
- The municipal increase contributes about 0.2
- The county contributes nothing
That is why a resident can describe a bill going up several percent while the council accurately describes its own portion going up about one.
Two honest caveats on that arithmetic. It assumes each body’s levy increase flows proportionally into individual bills, which holds only if the town’s total assessed value stays flat — new construction added to the tax rolls softens the rate somewhat. And we could not establish the 2026 change for the fire districts or open space, so those are not in the total. Your own bill will differ depending on your assessment and your fire district.
What drove the school increase
The Board of Education’s budget points to cost pressures rather than new programs:
- Health benefits up 22% — about $7.9 million
- Charter school payments up $966,246
- Out-of-district special education up about $2.02 million
- Transportation up $973,348
Superintendent Dr. Evelyn Mamman has said the district’s academic programs were already “cut to the bone.”
Whether those are the right answers is a fair argument to have. It is an argument to have with the Board of Education, which sets that portion of the bill and meets monthly — not with the Township Council.
Why your August bill wasn’t the final number
Here is a detail that explains a lot of the confusion, and it comes straight from the township’s tax office.
Third-quarter bills were mailed June 30 and were based on an estimated tax rate. The township’s Tax Collector page states it plainly: “When the certified tax rate for 2026 becomes available, any adjustment for final 2026 property tax amounts will be reflected in the fourth quarter installment.”
The page also says “2026 Final / 2027 Preliminary tax bills will be mailed in September.” Quarterly payments are due Feb. 1, May 1, Aug. 1 and Nov. 1, each with a ten-day grace period.
So if you looked at your August bill and did the math on the year, you were working from an estimate. The certified figure arrives with the September mailing and lands on the Nov. 1 payment.
What to look at on your own bill
When the September bill arrives, the useful comparison isn’t the single total. It’s the lines:
- The total — the number that actually leaves your account
- The school portion — roughly two-thirds of it, set by the Board of Education
- The municipal portion — about a fifth, set by the Township Council
- The county portion — about 15%
- Your fire district, which depends on where you live
- Your assessment, and whether it changed
Compare those lines year over year rather than the totals alone. That is the only way to see which body actually moved your bill.
And it is worth holding both facts at once: the township’s roughly 1% figure can be entirely accurate at the same time that a homeowner’s total bill rises considerably more. They are measuring different things.
Sources: East Brunswick Township Council meeting, Aug. 24, 2026 (EBTV); Township of East Brunswick 2025 Audit Synopsis; 2026 Municipal Budget Advertisement; East Brunswick Tax Collector, eastbrunswick.org; East Brunswick Board of Education FY2026 budget; Middlesex County 2026 budget.
