Unpopular program required by county
By:Alec Moore
Hillsborough Tax Assessor Debra Blaney says a moratorium on the township’s rolling reassessment program is out of the question, but township officials are not giving up.
In late July, Mayor Joseph Tricarico said he wanted to look into the possibility of imposing a moratorium on the rolling reassessment program to balance the inequitable disparity between homeowners when it comes to reassessments.
Under the rolling reassessment program, homeowners in neighborhoods with high volumes of home sales, are reassessed more frequently than those in neighborhoods with less frequent sales.
As a result, those homeowners end up paying more in taxes because of the increasing value of their homes.
Ms. Blaney said that regardless of how members of the Township Committee feel about the reassessment program, there is little, if anything, they can do to change it.
"The Township Committee shouldn’t have anything to do with the reassessments," Ms. Blaney said. "I’m under the direction of the county, and this is something that shouldn’t be in (the Township Committee’s) hands."
"My job is to bring the assessments to market value and the process is not supposed to be influenced by politics or local government at all," she said.
Mayor Tricarico emphasized that he will never recommend the committee to take any actions outside the scope of its legal authority, however, he also emphasized that he is unsatisfied with explanations he has received from Ms. Blaney and executives at the county level regarding rolling reassessments.
"No one has given me a satisfactory answer," said Dr. Tricarico. "There has to be property taxes and there has to be reassessments I’m very familiar with that process but it has to be done in an equitable manner."
On Tuesday, the mayor, Deputy Mayor John Gelardi, Committeewoman Sonya Martin and Committeeman Bill Gold stated that they feel the county should pay for the cost of the township’s reassessment program. The committee members said that since the county mandates the reassessments, then the county should foot the township’s reassessment bill.