Monroe Township will undergo a complete revaluation of all properties in town, with new tax assessments taking effect for 2013.
State Tax Court Judge Gail Menyuk ordered the revaluation in response to a lawsuit filed in 2007 by a large group of Monroe residents who sought the updated property valuations and resulting changes in tax assessments.
“We found out that of the residential properties, about 24 percent of new construction from 2000 were paying 40 percent of the entire town’s property taxes,” said John Keane, a member of the Concerned Citizens of Monroe Township. “We thought, ‘This is wrong.’”
The citizens group argued that residents of homes built since the last revaluation, in 1993, have been paying too much in property taxes. Their research indicated that homeowners in some newer communities are paying about 70 percent more, and in some instances double the taxes paid by residents of similar homes in the town’s older communities.
The judge ordered the revaluation to be done for the 2012 tax year, but Township Business Administrator Wayne Hamilton said the judge has agreed to Monroe’s request to extend the deadline to 2013.
“We are not disputing the revaluation,” Hamilton said. “We didn’t feel it was the right time.”
Ideally, it would have been done after the real estate market had bottomed out and stabilized, Hamilton said. But the court has spoken and action is being taken, he added.
Attorney Jeffrey D. Gordon of Archer & Greiner, Princeton, represented the citizens group in the case and conducted a study to see what needed to be done.
“The township refused to do things they were supposed to,” Keane said, referring to the citizens’ attempts to bring about a revaluation before filing the lawsuit.
Residents Gerald Krzyzkowski, Norman Rubenstein, Frank A. Giubileo and Keane were listed as plaintiffs in the suit against Monroe, but the citizens group actually consisted of approximately 1,000 township homeowners, many living in the Regency and Renaissance adult communities. The group was “dissatisfied with the administration, equalization and the amount of their own and other local property tax assessments in Monroe Township,” according to legal documents.
The citizens group noted irregularities in Monroe’s tax assessment ratio, which is used to convert market values of properties into taxable assessments. The group said the township excluded about 300 properties from its evaluation, which would determine the assessment ratio over the two-year sample period from 2002 to 2004. Of the 300 exclusions, they said, all were properties that would have decreased the town’s overall assessment ratio.
Several residential developments have been built since the last revaluation, including several age-restricted developments. There have also been three warehouse buildings constructed since 1993. Zoning changes that may affect values are also part of the factors to be considered in the revaluation.
According to Hamilton, Monroe will hire a firm to inspect and appraise the more than 20,000 properties in town. The end result, after the revaluation, may be that “some homeowners may get a decrease, some may get an increase, but most should effectively stay the same,” Hamilton said.