BY CLARE MARIE CELANO
Staff Writer
FREEHOLD — The month of July will bring property owners in the borough a tax bill with some new numbers.
Following a revaluation of all properties in the borough and a change in the assessment on those properties, some property owners may see their property taxes remain the same, some may see an increase in the amount they pay and some people may see a decrease, according to tax assessor Mitchell Elias.
Elias said the purpose of the revaluation was to redistribute the tax burden among the borough’s property owners; in other words, to make certain that property owners are paying their fair share of taxes based on the present value of their property.
“We cannot collect one penny more in taxes after the revaluation than we did before it,” Elias said.
Realty Appraisal of West New York was hired last year to conduct the revaluation of every piece of property in the community — which amounted to 3,297 taxable properties, according to Neil Rubenstein of Realty Appraisal.
Letters were sent to all property owners with an estimated tax rate, along with the new assessment of their homes and property, according to Elias.
The last revaluation of borough property was completed in 1989. In 1991 there was a reassessment of borough property. The difference between the two is that a revaluation involves a physical inspection of each property in reaching a new assessment, while a reassessment is a review of property transactions in order to arrive at an updated value and does not involve an inspector’s visit to each property.
Elias said the current overall tax rate in the borough (i.e. the municipal tax rate, K-8 school tax rate, Freehold Regional High School District tax rate and Monmouth County tax rate combined) is $3.55 per $100 of assessed valuation. Officials are estimating that the overall tax rate will be reduced to about $1.60 per $100 of assessed valuation based on the current municipal budget. The exact new overall tax rate will appear on the July tax bill, Elias said.
Prior to certification of the new assessments by the tax assessor, property owners had the opportunity to meet with representatives of Realty Appraisal to ask how the new assessment was arrived at. They were encouraged to discuss the figures with the firm if they were not satisfied with their new revaluation amount.
According to Rubenstein, 236 people requested a meeting with representatives of Realty Appraisal to discuss their property revaluation.
“This is a total of 7.1 percent, which is below the average for a revaluation,” Rubenstein said.
He said the typical number of people who request a meeting is about 10 percent of the total number of properties that have been reassessed.
If a property owner was not satisfied following his discussion with the representatives from Realty Appraisal, he then had the opportunity to file an appeal with Monmouth County. More than 100 property owners did that, according to Rubenstein.
Rubenstein said the 104 property owners who filed an appeal are within the range of 3.15 percent, which Rubenstein said falls within the average for his company. The deadline for a county appeal to have been filed was April 1.
Elias said when the issue is heard the burden will be on the property owner to prove that Realty Appraisal’s new assessment of the owner’s property is wrong.
“The town does not have to prove that the value is right,” he said.
Property owners who have appealed their assessment to the county must appear before the Board of Taxation to make their case as to why they believe the new assessment is incorrect.
In 2004, the borough’s average assessment of commercial and residential property was at 65.9 percent of true market value, according to Elias.
In 2002, Freehold Borough and 10 other municipalities in Monmouth County were ordered by the county Board of Taxation to revalue their properties.