Business Owners Take Aim at County Reassessment Program

When Joe Mendolia opened on Mantua Grove Road only a few years ago, he had a property tax bill of around $10,000.

But after the , Mendolia’s business, previously valued at around $250,000, leaped to a new value of $1.1 million.

And his taxes?

They nearly tripled.

And Mendolia isn’t alone in getting hit with a big increase under the revaluations, which are slowly rolling across the entire county, as evidenced by a number of small business owners who came out to an informal session with county officials Tuesday to criticize the process and the company who did revaluations, in the hopes of pushing for some change.

Much of the frustration for several in attendance came from what they said were the benchmarks used to determine property values—in Mendolia’s case, he said assessors considered car washes in Cherry Hill when figuring out what his was worth.

“Mantua Grove Road’s a long way from Cherry Hill,” he said.

Likewise, Darrell Blood, the chief financial officer for West Deptford-based Wyanoke Group, a medical publishing company, said the appraisal—also apparently based on properties outside Gloucester County—for his company’s headquarters on Grove Road was “totally outrageous.”

“The valuation is nowhere near market value,” he said.

But Bonnie Longo, the director of the county assessor’s office, said that’s exactly what drove the new assessments.

“It all comes down to market value,” she said.

And, as deputy county administrator Gerald White pointed out, there has been a shift—about 5 percent on average—across the towns that have been revalued so far, moving the burden from residential properties over to commercial properties.

It’s a harsh reality, Longo said, but it points to one thing: Business owners were likely undervalued for years under the old assessments, and had been paying less than their fair share.

While several business owners acknowledged that might be the case, they still expressed worries it could send things into a spiral.

“We don’t want to see empty stores,” Robert Botto said. “That helps nobody.”

White agreed with that sentiment, and said the county wants to do what it can to foster job creation.

“Small- and medium-sized businesses are the lifeblood of the county,” White said. “We want you to stay here.”

But at the same time, White said, the aim of the revaluation program is to get the entire county on a level playing field, with fair assessments across the board. While he said assessments are an inexact science, he said the county was satisfied with how the appraisal company has performed so far.

“If there are errors, we’ll get them corrected,” he said.

For Mendolia, that means the next step is a state tax court appeal—one of more than 100 other cases filed over properties in West Deptford last year—but he said there should be a mid-level way of resolving assessment disputes, rather than escalating straight from the county up to the state.

While he was able to get his assessment reduced slightly by appealing to the county, Mendolia said he didn’t see the point of jumping straight to the court, rather than trying to work out a compromise.

“We don’t want to spend a bunch of money on legal fees,” he said. “But I can’t make it on $27,000.”