I n response to the news story “Mayor: Empty Storefronts a New Reality” (Sentinel, Oct. 23), everyone knows they’re actually an old reality. I’ve asked numerous business owners over the years why they moved. They’ve said it’s East Brunswick’s rising property tax cost, which is much higher than elsewhere.
The mayor — quoted as saying “businesses move into areas where their studies indicate that they can make a profit” — already knows the solution to East Brunswick’s problem of a 12 percent vacancy rate compared to 6 percent statewide: Make the township competitive by cutting spending, then lowering property taxes.
It’s wrong to assume low commercial property tax revenues are the only cause of East Brunswick’s troubles. The real culprit is the rising spending that increases our property tax, which has gone up 9 percent per year in the last three years alone, New Jersey state tax records show. Recent years’ escalations are much higher than previous years’ increases. Nevertheless, the average property tax has more than doubled (up 132 percent) from $4,751 in the year 2000 to around $11,000 now.
And what do most taxpayers really get for all that money given away? Next to nothing.
The ever-higher salaries plus benefits and/or growing bureaucracies in the three cost segments of our tax bill — school, county, municipal employees — must stop. This is the bottom-line message to the administration and town council: Stop spending larger and larger amounts each year and paying for those by simply sending us the (property tax) bills. This is an unconscionable, unending quarterly raid of our pockets.
Remember when East Brunswick received the large sum of $25 million from developers of the Golden Triangle? Leading 200-plus infuriated taxpayers (sick of soaring taxes) at a packed meeting in 2011, I asked a Democratic council member what happened to that $25 million? The response was that it was spent.
Our property tax didn’t decrease despite the $25 million received. We said at a town council meeting that this additional tax money, supplementing the town’s regular property tax revenues, could’ve been used to reduce the average property owner’s tax burden by $1,470 ($25 million divided by about 17,000 taxpayers). But did the administration and town council care enough for the commercial and residential property taxpayers who pay them? No.
The problem with people who run governments is that the more money they get, the more they spend. So taxpayers are skeptical when those running for, or already in, office speak about raising money from here or there. Taxpayers worry the additional money will just be spent, and no tax relief will follow,
It’s disappointing the Republicans, a majority in the town council, have done nothing to provide tax relief, despite promises they made in personal and public meetings in 2011. In their oversized campaign flier, the Republicans claimed they brought back the 2014 municipal portion of our tax bill to the 2006 level.
Taxpayers comparing their own tax bills for these two years will see the huge increase. The average municipal portion of our tax was $1,249 in 2006, which has skyrocketed a whopping 69 percent to $2,113 now — nearly an annual 9 percent increase in eight years.
What really matters is the total amount we pay now. In 2006, the average East Brunswick property tax was $7,238. It has risen by $3,762 — a huge 52 percent — to an average of about $11,000 now in 2014. Even the tax rate has been jacked up from 7.347 percent in 2006 to 10.239 percent now, a 39 percent rise.
Many New Jersey towns have successfully eased tax burdens on property owners.
Aware of this, Democratic candidates said in a campaign meeting on Oct. 20 at the East Brunswick Public Library that they have a plan to reduce residential taxpayers’ burden from 80 percent to 60 percent. When questioned, none of them cited any proven record of having done this anywhere: raised tax revenues and used them to offset spending, thereby reducing the property tax. Are their promises going to be broken, too, after getting elected?
All those who get elected, take notice: Our property tax bill is your only true campaign flier. We’ll kick out those who raise taxes again.
Kumar Balani is a resident of East Brunswick.