A group of homeowners is suing Monroe because it believes the township’s assessment ratio — the number used to translate today’s housing prices into assessments based on decade-old values — is out of whatck.
I don’t want to get into the specifics of their complaint, which includes questions about how the ratio was calculated and some accusations of improprieties. But the assessment problem does point out a more general problem with the way we pay for government in New Jersey.
New Jersey property owners, as everyone knows by now, pay the highest property taxes in the nation and use the property tax to cover nearly three quarters of the cost of government.
Towns, schools and counties set tax rates based on the value of property within their borders, the values being based on market prices. They are set infrequently — generally because a full revaluation of property involves inspecting every house, store and warehouse and is quite costly — meaning that most assessments are out of date. To address this issue when new residential and commercial properties are built, towns attempt to go back in time through an assessment ratio.
In the case of Monroe, new residents in several communities are saying that they are being assessed too high when compared to older homes, which leaves them paying more than their share of the cost of local government.
A full revaluation would fix this — though not fix what maybe a historical problem. And it won’t prevent this problem from popping up in the future.
The best way to address this is to lessen the property tax burden across the board — by shifting the cost of New Jersey government (meaning local, school and county) off property taxes and onto income taxes, which are calculated annually.
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
Hank Kalet 