Monroe Township officials are planning to bond for $5 million to deal with a record number of successful tax appeals this year.
Monroe needs the approval of the state Local Finance Board to bond for the amount over a five-year period.
“We’ll spread it out over a multiyear period,” township Business Administrator Wayne R. Hamilton said. “Otherwise, it would deplete us.”
A total of 2,751 tax appeals, only two of them commercial, were filed with the Middlesex County Board of Taxation by April. The lion’s share of the appeals came from residents of Monroe’s senior communities.
“It’s indicative of what’s happening in the national economy,” Hamilton said. “Every financial consultant is advising people to file tax appeals.”
Monroe is predominantly residential and has the lowest equalized tax rate in Middlesex County, he noted.
Aggressive tax attorneys have gone into many of the senior communities to sign up residents en masse, Hamilton said.
“They go in and for a fee, for a percentage of the first-year savings, they sign them all up,” he said.
The senior communities have a limited number of models in each development, making it easier to do the appeals.
The township will issue credits to anyone with a successful tax appeal for the fourth-quarter tax bills. If the credit exceeds the refund amount, a check will be issued, Hamilton said.
Monroe has been holding out on conducting a township-wide property revaluation until the real estate market bottoms out, Hamilton said. The township’s last revaluation was in 1992. The Middlesex County Board of Taxation has not ordered the township to conduct a new one, he said.
“Middlesex County has a very relaxed posture in that area,” Hamilton said.
It would cost Monroe $2 million to conduct the revaluation, he said.
“We are in kind of a wait-and-see mode to see if the market has bottomed out,” he said. “Our concern is that the market hasn’t bottomed out yet. It’s exhausting doing it this way. You don’t want to fritter away $2 million.”
Monroe is more fortunate than some other communities that are already built out. Roughly 300 new homes are built each year, he said.
“That will help ease some of our drop in ratables,” Hamilton said.
Township officials had to add $600,000 to the reserve for uncollected taxes in this year’s budget because of the large number of tax appeals. The $45.2 million budget was up roughly $2.2 million, or 5 percent, this year.
Monroe lost $582,000 in state aid in 2010, which was more than township officials had anticipated.