Tax assessor points to untrained staff and measurement problems
By: Jake Uitti
MONTGOMERY So as not to run into the same tax-assessment problems experienced this year, township officials on Wednesday discussed possible improvements in calculating property assessments in the future.
Eleanor Blake, the township’s tax assessor, said there were two main problems that contributed to the skewed numbers in this year’s assessments, which were ultimately thrown out.
She said she currently has an untrained staff, with three new members she said "will be very good, but they’re not there yet." Recently, Ms. Blake lost staff members who left the township in favor of positions elsewhere in the state.
William Linville, administrator of the Somerset County Tax Board, was in attendance Wednesday and agreed that the township having a new staff contributed to the faulty assessments. He said the county tax board would have looked harder at and maybe not even approved Ms. Blake’s application for a reassessment this year if it had known about the staffing problem.
In addition, Ms. Blake said, she discovered during this year’s tax-assessment process more and more discrepancies in measurements in acreage and between housing models in various neighborhoods throughout the township. This made the basis of her assessments wrong, she said.
"I found the scope of the problems were much bigger than I thought," Ms. Blake said.
If the township is not able to correct the problem with its tax assessment, officials said a complete revaluation may have to be undertaken.
The last revaluation in the township was in 1999. A new one could cost the township between $1 million and $2 million. A revaluation would involve bringing in an outside firm that would measure and document virtually every aspect of every home in the township in order to come up with an accurate market value. Subsequent reassessments would make sure those data were kept up to date.
Mayor Louise Wilson said the problem with reassessments is also a function of an "unfair" tax structure statewide.
"The people need to be able to trust the process and we can’t trust it ourselves at this point," Mayor Wilson said.
Ms. Blake said over the next few months, she will be correcting errors in the system, and depending on where she is in late February or early March, she may apply to the county for a new reassessment, which may save the township from doing the costly revaluation.
She will be coming back to the Township Committee to provide feedback on her findings between now and March, she said.
Committeeman John Warms said this was a good idea. "At the end of March, we can sit down and talk possibilities," he said.
Committeeman Mark Caliguire said, moving forward, he wants a better flow of information between Ms. Blake and the committee.

