A revaluation of property in Middletown that Monmouth County wanted effective this year won’t be, today’s Asbury Park Press reports.
From the story:
County officials are now probing why Middletown did not comply with an order from the Monmouth County Tax Board to have the revaluation take effect in 2008, instead of 2009.
Middletown officials, who hired a special attorney late last year to evaluate whether the township could legally seek a postponement of the revaluation in part because of fluctuating real estate prices, say the municipality did not have enough information to submit a complete filing by a Jan. 10 deadline.
“I didn’t believe that the town could be finished in time,” Charles Heck, Middletown’s tax assessor, told the board today. “That’s what possessed me to file a book on Jan. 10 the way that I did.”
But here’s the part that jumps out:
Middletown’s last reassessment was in 1991; its last revaluation was in 1982, county officials said.
A reassessments is completed by a local tax assessor, whereas a revaluation is done by an outside firm. Red Bank went through a revaluation in late 2006 that hit taxpayers last year; the average property value more than doubled in the process.
Middletown Deputy Mayor Pamela Brightbill, who did not attend today’s meeting, said that with the current downturn in the real estate market, values set in October 2007 could have become outdated fairly quickly, leading to numerous tax appeals from taxpayers.
“Some of these neighborhoods have not had a sale in six months,” said Brightbill, who noted that she is satisfied with the delay. “We didn’t think it would be a fair time.”
A confluence of factors, including the amount of time it takes to do a revaluation of a town as geographically large as Middletown, a shifting real estate market that can confound the value of properties, and the amount of work that remained to be completed, led to the delay, Bernard Reilly, the township’s attorney, told the board.
“We weren’t going to be comfortable with the product,” Reilly told the board.
While Middletown will not have to physically reinspect every lot in town for the revaluation, it will need to restart the process of setting a value for each property, Reilly said.
While it is not unusual for a municipality to not be in compliance with a revaluation or reassessment order issued by the tax board, typically it is because the town is either in the process of updating its tax maps or hiring a company to perform the work that is required, said Matthew Clark, the county’s tax administrator.
In the 16 years that Clark has worked with Monmouth County, this is the first time that a municipality has missed a deadline after having updated its tax maps and hired a firm to conduct a revaluation or reassessment, he said.
“The progress was such that it could have been delivered,” said Clark, who noted that the board can postpone the filing deadline by about a month if a town is close to completion. “Their level of productivity historically would represent that, if continued, (the revaluation) would have been available for submission in early February.”
The board instructed Clark to investigate Middletown’s handling of the revaluation process and issue a report during its March 12 meeting. He intends to speak with Realty Appraisal, the West New York-based company that the township hired to perform the revaluation.
Clark declined to specify what, if any, penalties Middletown could face, saying it is too early in the investigation process. The board does not have the ability to assess financial fines, he said.
