Township Officials Hopeful Change in Assessment Process is Coming

After months of arguing that New Jersey’s property tax assessment system is broken, Barnegat may finally have gotten someone to listen, township officials said this week.

Mayor Al Cirulli, Committeeman Martin Lisella and township Business Administrator David Breeden met with officials from Department of Community Affairs on March 22, and Cirulli said a 30-minute meeting stretched into 90 minutes as DCA officials asked more questions and sought more details.

“We made our point,” Breeden said during his report at the Township Committee meeting last Monday night. “The current system is outdated.”

Breeden said DCA Commissioner Richard Constable, who was joined by DCA Deputy Commissioner Charles Richmond and Chief of Staff Paul Macchia, listened to the information Barnegat officials presented regarding the need to reform the system to allow local property tax assessors to make more timely changes to property assessments.

In addition, Cirulli said, the state’s League of Municipalities has pledged its support.

“The league was impressed with the work done by the township on assessments and I feel confident that with the assistance of the league, meaningful statewide change will be realized,” he said.

Barnegat has been fighting for changes to the property assessment process since going through a township-wide revaluation in 2006 which was begun before the housing market – and property values – plummeted in the wake of the national economic downturn followed in 2007 and 2008.

Many towns throughout New Jersey have been dealing with similar issues; in Barnegat, the result was more than 1,400 homeowners appealed their assessments. The successful appeals cost the township more than $2 million in revenue.

The township sought permission from the county to allow its local assessor to adjust the township’s property values downward across the board by 10 percent, but the county repeatedly refused, saying a generalized reduction doesn’t account for the differences between areas of town.

Instead, the township paid $400,000 for a hybrid reassessment that addressed assessments in four senior communities, permitted by the county because the homes in those portions of town were similar.

In September, Breeden estimated it would have cost $35,000 for the township’s tax assessor to make adjustments to the township’s property values.

In Florida, the state allows the local assessor to make adjustments yearly, based on the housing market, Cirulli said.

“We are seeking the ability for the township tax assessor to do what is needed, to make sure every property value is equitable,” he said. “If everything is done fairly, then everyone is paying their fair share.”

The focus is now on a legislative solution to expand the power and authority of the local tax assessors to make more timely changes. Breeden said. That is critical, he said, because the current system – which requires physical inspection of properties – simply takes too much time.

“And there’s just nine firms in the state certified to do revaluations,” Breeden said. With more than 500 towns in the state, that’s a lot to spread out – which makes it difficult to have things done in a timely manner.

Township resident Angelo Mureo, who filed an appeal of his assessment after his property taxes rose 60 percent in five years, read aloud from an open letter to Gov. Chris Christie during last week's meeting, attacking the hybrid reassessment as illegal and calling for a “comprehensive, fair and complete reassessment to include all township neighborhoods.”

Mureo also called on Christie to appoint an independent prosecutor “to investigate any wrongdoing surrounding the 2010 illegal selective partial assessment and full prosecution of those elected and appointed officials for their role in corrupting our community against each other,” he said.

Cirulli said after the meeting that the claim that township officials did something illegal with the reassessment is wrong, because the township repeatedly went to the county tax assessor, who refused to allow the township to employ an easier and more cost-effiective method.