No promises, but some action

Mayor says Claremont residents’ taxes shouldn’t be increased until 2006 when the cleanup is supposed to be finished.

By: Melissa Edmond
   The Borough Council is taking steps to help the residents in the Claremont subdivision whose tax assessments were raised even though a creosote cleanup in their neighborhood still continues, but many of the residents feel that the council’s steps are too small.
   Borough Council will send a letter prepared by Borough Attorney Doug Reina to Cathy Ganter, the borough tax assessor, asking her to reconsider the 2005 tax increase to Claremont, Mayor Angelo Corradino said at Monday’s council meeting.
   The council also will send a letter to the Somerset County Tax Board requesting that the increase in the 2005 taxes be rescinded and returned to what the taxes were in 2004.
   Mayor Corradino said the residents’ taxes shouldn’t be increased until 2006 when the cleanup is supposed to be finished.
   However, Mr. Reina made it clear that the council didn’t have the authority to fix the rate of taxation or give the residents the money back for the taxes.
   "It seems like they’re (the Borough Council) saying they agree the assessment shouldn’t have been changed but also saying that there’s nothing they can do," said Louise Drive resident Donna Snyder, who led a petition effort in September joined by more than 70 Claremont residents protesting their raised tax assessments.
   Ms. Snyder said the Claremont residents’ assessments were lowered when the cleanup first started in 1999 and were promised that they would stay reduced until the cleanup is complete.
   However, their assessments were raised for 2005 even though the cleanup isn’t finished, she said at Monday’s borough meeting.
   She said a lot of the Claremont residents are still mad.
   "A lot of people were hoping that the mayor and council would say ‘Yes, we’re going to take care of it. Don’t worry about it’ and not give them the run around, the ‘We’ll see what we can do,’" she said about the approximately 20 Claremont residents at the council meeting.
   More than 50 residents attended a Nov. 10 meeting with the mayor and tax assessor at Borough Hall.
   "We’re not getting exact answers and that is what’s upsetting people," she said. "There’s not much we can do until they give us answers," she added.
   The Borough Council unanimously agreed to the two letters suggested by Mr. Reina.
   "These are the steps we’ll take and hopefully they’ll work," Mayor Corradino said Monday night.
   In October, Ms. Ganter said she spoke with Pat Seppi from the EPA who said the majority of the cleanup was complete except for six homes. Ms. Ganter said the reduction assessments for all of the homes affected by the creosote contamination, except for six that are still undergoing the cleanup process, were brought back to their original value.
   She said she applied the reduced assessments to the six homes, and the rest of the development went back to the value prior to the reduction from the last revaluation in 1996.