Tax Appeals Plummet By Nearly 21,000 Following Last Year's Reval in Manchester Township

The results are not completely in yet, but one thing is for sure: Manchester Township will see far fewer tax appeals than it did last year.

That’s not just a few fewer appeals; it numbers in the tens of thousands.

With the deadline looming on May 1, Manchester faces just 79 tax appeals. Last year, the township was buried by over 21,000.

“Ratables went down about 20 percent, so that was roughly $700 million,” Manchester Councilman Samuel F. Fusaro said, adding that appeals from the county and the school district also took a toll on the township.

Fusaro broached the subject during the council meeting on Monday night, April 22. The scheduled public hearing concerning the proposed municipal budget was postponed, but Fusaro wanted the residents to know there was some good news.

“Successful appeals become uncollected taxes and that makes that line item in the budget jump drastically,” Fusaro said. “That adds to the amount we have to put in reserve for uncollected taxes.”

Appeals are down following a $175,000 reassessment the township conducted last year. The 79 appeals for this year falls in line with the typical 40-50 appeals the township saw between 2000 and 2006, Fusaro said.

The township was part of a mandatory county-wide reassessment in 2009, but when the market began to crash, council decided it wanted to stay ahead of the curve. It called for the reassessment in 2011, to be conducted last year.

“This time we wanted to be proactive, but we were a little late,” Council President Craig Wallis said. “ … This was done to bring everyone on the same playing field.”

“We knew we were behind, but 2012 caught us before we could begin the process,” Fusaro said.

A public hearing on the township’s proposed $31,059,684.16 budget was scheduled for Monday night. As proposed, the budget carries with it a decrease of about $30 on the municipal tax rate, according to Township Clerk Sabino Skibo.

However, the State of New Jersey failed to certify the proposed budget by Monday afternoon, Wallis said.

Manchester Township is one of many New Jersey municipalities switching its fiscal year to match that of the state this year, Wallis said. New Jersey’s fiscal year runs from July 1-June 30. Previously, Manchester’s fiscal year ran from Jan. 1-Dec. 31.

As a result, the township didn’t receive its state aid numbers until just before the deadline. Manchester submitted its proposed budget at the same time as many other municipalities, causing what Wallis believes to be a logjam at the state level.

“I’m sure this won’t be a problem,” Wallis said. “It delays things, but it puts us in sync with the state.”

“We didn’t want to have a public hearing and then have the state change the budget,” Fusaro said. “If the state changes anything, we have to do it all over again.”

The public hearing has been rescheduled for May 13.