Tax Administrator Says State Never Informed County of Potential to Extend Aid Deadline

Only a handful of school districts in New Jersey chose to use a state aid windfall announced earlier this month for property tax relief, despite the fact that the July 19 deadline given by the state for districts to amend their tax levies was more fluid than previously believed.

The announcement of extra aid  – which Gov. Chris Christie and the Department of Education "strongly encouraged" districts use for tax relief – came Tuesday, July 12.

But some districts only managed to squeeze in a meeting and because they were granted an extension on the July 19 deadline by their county tax boards – a deadline that the DOE has said could have been extended if districts and tax boards could come to an agreement. 

In Parsippany, for example, the Board of Education was granted wiggle room on its deadline after receiving word from the state that the deadline was not hard and fast, officials there said. The board met on July 20 and voted for tax relief.

New Milford also received an extension, and will decide on how to use the extra state funds at its regular meeting in August, though it does not plan to use the aid windfall to tax relief.

But Ocean County Tax Administrator Lawrence Vituscka said the county tax board never received any direction from the DOE beyond the initial guidance, which gave the July 19 deadline and mentioned nothing about the possibility of an extension.

“No one contacted us at all,” Vituscka said in an email. 

DOE spokesman Justin Barra said his department had its eye on tax bills when it gave out the initial tight deadline.

Counties were waiting on the districts’ updated school budgets before they could issue already overdue tax bills, Barra said, “so the state gave guidance to districts to certify with their tax boards by July 19, beyond which point counties would have started facing real financial hardships.” 

But ultimately, “that is a local decision that we left up to them.” As a result, he said, it’s possible that some districts could still certify adjustments to their tax levies in August.

Toms River Regional Schools Business Administrator William Doering said that when aid became available that the immediate nature of the deadline was part of the reason to bump the additional state aid to the 2012-13 budget instead of using it for 2011-12, to reduce the current tax levy.

Daniel Nee, Tom Dunphy, Lauren Burgoon, Eamon Harbord, Jason Koestenblatt, John Patten, Tracy Montgomery Schoenberg and Natalie Davis contributed to this report.