Council Approves $175K for Reassessment Measures
"Hybrid reassessment" required after home values plummet
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Toms River will spend $175,000 to reassess property values around town, after a large number of successful tax appeals following plummetting home values.
Called a "hybrid reassessment," the measure will not be the extensive process the township underwent in 2009, when it was a complete reassessment of property values.
"They're not going out and doing the exams in the homes like they did previous," said Town Council President Maurice Hill. "It's going to be done on a computer database."
The $175,000 will pay an outside contractor $100,000 to administer the reassessments, with $75,000 spent for commercial properties.
It's called a hybrid reassessment as it does not have to meet the strict state standards for a complete reassessment, considering the last time the township had one was recent enough to relax state standards, Township Administrator Paul Shives said.
"The state is not requiring us to do a complete reassessment...The state is allowing for a relaxed inspection procedure," Shives said. "It's not all in-house but a outside contractor is also helping."
Shives said the reassessment will affect the tax bills of residential properties as well as businesses.
"There will be a lot of inspections on commercial structures," Shives said.
Shives said previously the large number of tax appeals as a result of lower property values is greatly affecting Toms River's budget.
For example, appeals decreased Toms River's total assessed value by $780 million in the past 2 years. Shives explained previously the impact of this change is that 1.4 cents of the 2012 tax increase is due to the change in property assessments from 2011 to 2012.
Previously, the council passed a resolution in support of the township tax collector to take a look at the entire township property values, and to make adjustments if necessary to bring the assessments in line with the recent sales data.
Shives said the township had to reimburse taxpayers more than $2.3 million in that time.
Shives said whole neighborhoods will be reassessed because of the large number of successful appeals. In May, several hundred tax appeals were outstanding, which will further result in impact to the budget's tax revenue, Shives said.
HR
7:59 pm on Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Basically the council is spending more money we don't have on useless reassessments to replace the ones that were erroneously done within the last five years all while trying to put the blame on the taxpayers for utilizing our right to an appeal?? I swear you can't make this stuff up.
Mel
8:58 pm on Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Why don't they just roll back to our original assessments and leave it at that. Save that $175K .
Dainty
9:03 am on Thursday, July 12, 2012
It seems like smoke and mirrors to me. My taxes went from 4,000 (2007) to 6,500 (2012) Meanwhile my home value has dropped over $150,000. Something needs to be adjusted!
1stcav
9:08 am on Thursday, July 12, 2012
Mel; because they would be admitting they "ripped us off " for those years and may be liable. If an outside source says it should be lowered, they save face and say " that's why we did this, to be MORE realistic with today"s property values.The 175k is more or less an Insurance policy , and they don't admit they were thieves !!!! Jessie James seems to be an office holder in Toms River ( Tax Dept. ), after all Wyatt Earp is running for Sheriff !!!
PJ Ortley
10:48 pm on Thursday, July 12, 2012
Lowering assessments for everyone only requires that the tax rate go up, it does not yield any savings to taxpayers. The amount of money that needs to be collected can only go down by reducing spending, not by reducing assessments. Re-Assessment only redistributes the tax burden differently. In fact, if commercial assessments go down, which is likely given all the empty buildings in Tom's River, then the residential tax burden will increase.
steven abbott
10:25 am on Sunday, August 26, 2012
Agree but at least it will be distributed more evenly. So those that haven't appealed yet will see a decrease while those that already appealed and won will see an increase because values will all drop and the tax rate will go up......
Martin
7:39 am on Friday, July 13, 2012
You're right about higher taxes, no matter what the assessments are, until the politicians get spending under control. Voters can do something about that in November.
However, empty bldgs. pay the same property taxes as occupied bldgs.
1stcav
9:18 am on Friday, July 13, 2012
Martin , true , they don't care if your making money or not, it doesn't effect the TAX rate , that's the business problem , not the tax man's.All these HOME"S being foreclosed on , they don't care if you were up to date for the last 20 yrs, it's due NOW, if you can't pay...by house. The bank now has to pay and maintain it's investment, bottom line the town gets it's TAXES !!!!! YOU loose !
RPtoTR
4:31 pm on Friday, July 13, 2012
If they were honest about it they would stop wasting the money and our time and simply raise the tax rate, every thing else is just a sham. At least the burglars running so rampant in town lately are honest about what they are doing.