Politics & Government

Council Approves $175K for Reassessment Measures

"Hybrid reassessment" required after home values plummet

Toms River will spend $175,000 to reassess property values around town, after a large number of successful tax appeals following

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."

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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.

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"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.


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