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Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy delivered his calendar year 2011 municipal budget proposal to the City Council in person at Monday night’s caucus meeting, as the city enters the final month covered by the temporary budget passed in early January.

The $477,320,913 budget, presented to council members in thick, colorful binders, was being delivered in a “timely fashion this year for the first time in recent history,” Healy said, setting a tone that aims to make this budget a less-contentious affair than it has been it recent years.

“Despite cuts in state aid amounting to about $30 million and an increase in costs that are out of our control, such as pension bills, health costs, and arbitrated increases in contracts, the administration has been able to introduce a budget keeping the municipal tax rate stable,” Healy said. “We don’t believe there will be any increase in municipal tax. That was one of our goals.”

Healy pointed out that the budget does include several one-time revenue sources, including $2.8 million in tax abatement fees and $17 million from the sale of municipal property.

It was apparent that Jack Kelly, Jersey City’s business administrator, was taking notes at Civic JC’s January Budget Forum, when number of similar sized cities’ budgets were discussed. The forum looked at better ways to communicate fiscal difficulties and visions for the future with residents, and the mayor’s budget incorporated some of these ideas.

Included in the budget was a letter from the mayor highlighting some of the past year’s financial difficulties and cuts to state aid, as well as a departmental reporting of expenses, a mission statement, and a look at the proportional breakdown of various costs to the city, including pensions, health care, police, fire, and more.

The budget is “a more realistic picture of the city’s finances as it relates to actual revenue and expenditures,” Healy wrote in his introductory letter.

Also included was a “City of Jersey City Mission Statement,” in which the mayor laid out an “overall goal” of ensuring “that Jersey City is widely known as safe, progressive, economically sound, and affordable community in which businesses can invest and families can afford to call home.”

Another section, entitled “Citywide Goals,” said the administration hopes to streamline the government to be more efficient, become more sustainable, increase economic development and continue to fight Spectra Energy’s natural gas pipeline proposal.

The budget will be formally introduced by the City Council at Wednesday’s meeting.