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Politics & Government

Barnegat Committee Votes to Withhold Tax Payments From County

County says move is illegal, urges Barnegat to talk to the state

Frustrated with a property assessment policy that they say has cost the township about $2 million and what they view as a lack of responsiveness from county officials to requests for help on this and other issues, the Barnegat Township Committee voted to withhold its tax payments to the county until further notice.

In a 5-0 vote on Monday night on a motion put forth by Committeeman Martin Lisella, the committee directed Township Attorney Jerry Dasti to draw up a resolution informing the county of the township’s decision to withhold those payments and place them in escrow until the assessment issue can be resolved.

The other issues include an ongoing fight over responsibility for remediation costs at homes in the Mirage senior citizens community that were given certificates of occupancy but were found to have significant problems, and requests for county parks and help with installing recreation facilities at those parks.

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 “We’ve got to get the attention of the county,” Lisella said. “Maybe this will do that.”

The main issue, said Lisella and other township officials, is the assessments.

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County officials say the township is blaming the wrong folks.

“The county tax board is an autonomous body,” Freeholder Director Joseph H. Vicari said. “We have nothing to do with the assessments.”

“This is a state issue,” said Ocean County Clerk Carl W. Block. “Their threat to withhold county tax payments based on this is illegal and it will not happen.”

At issue are the township’s property assessments, which Barnegat residents and the committee agree are a mess. In 2006, the township – like a number of municipalities in Ocean County and the state – underwent a township-wide property revaluation. And then the real estate market crashed.

The result was more than 3,500 Barnegat residents appealed their property assessments over a two-year period, to the tune of $2 million in lost revenue to Barnegat, according to Township Administrator David Breeden. And more appeals are expected.

The township has been seeking to correct the assessments township-wide since 2009, so they reflect current property values. In early 2010 the township was allowed a reassessment of four communities within Barnegat – Mirage, Ocean Acres, Heritage Bay and Horizon – but Breeden and the committee say their plans to correct the entire town’s assessments have been rejected repeatedly by Lawrence Ozzie Vituscka, the Ocean County Tax Administrator.

“The position of the Township of Barnegat was made painfully clear to the county tax administrator,” Breeden said. “The Township strongly and repeatedly requested that the reassessment be performed in-house, similar to the manner it was performed in Lower Township, Cape May County. The county tax administrator insisted upon an expensive, time-consuming hybrid reassessment and refused to even consider our request for relief.”

In Lower Township, the township’s tax assessor was paid about $35,000 to reassess all the properties in the township in the wake of the real estate market crash, working nights and weekends to accomplish the task.

A hybrid reassessment would cost $400,000, Breeden said.

Vituscka was not available for comment; Block said Vituscka has been on a leave of absence for several months for a serious illness and if he comes back it will be a decision in consultation with his doctors. Block said Barbara Raney, who was the county’s tax administrator for several years before she retired a few years ago, is the temporary assistant tax administrator handling Vituscka’s duties.

The problem with Barnegat’s stance, Block said, is that while the county pays the salary of the tax administrator, the tax administrator does not report to county officials. The administrator reports directly to the state, Block said, noting the only say the county has is over the amount of the salary to be paid to the person.

“They keep passing the buck up the line,” Barnegat Mayor Jeffrey Melchiondo said. “Then when we go to the state the state will say, well, we can help you but you have to do this, this and this first.”

The problem with the tax appeals is that every time an assessment is reduced under appeal, that reduces the revenue coming into the town – but it doesn’t reduce the money that still has to be paid to the county and to the school districts. That has forced Barnegat to increase its reserve to make sure it has enough money to cover those payments – not unlike when a homeowner’s mortgage escrow payment rises to cover unanticipated increases in insurance or property taxes.

That was at the heart of the budget amendment that was presented at the meeting on Monday night. Because of all the appeals, the township had a deficit in its 2011-2012 budget, but the state allowed the township to use surplus to cover that deficit and allowed the township to remove that $850,000 from the equation that dictates the town’s needed reserve for uncollected taxes.

“People are being taxed at a much higher rate than they should be,” Deputy Mayor Al Cirulli said. “We need this to balance things out.

While the appeals have helped residents get their assessments in line so they are paying what they should be paying, Cirulli said, “we still have some discrepancies west of the Parkway.”

“Lower Township was allowed to do a blanket reduction,” Cirulli said. “These are extenuating times now. We need to let our professionals do this so we can give people the proper relief that they need.”

Lisella and Committeeman Al Bille, both of whom are real estate agents, said they believe the solution is simple and cost-effective if the township is allowed to do have the work done in-house.

“Every house (in the 2006 revaluation) was assessed by a professional assessor,” Lisella said. “We need to go back to those figures and then adjust them. We know the market has come down 25 to 30 percent since then.

“Florida adjust your (property) taxes every year, just based on what the market did,” he said.

Block said the problem is that a generalized reduction doesn’t account for differences between areas within a town. The values in one part of town may have fallen by 30 percent, while in others perhaps they’ve only fallen 10 percent.

“Just taking a percentage off wouldn’t meet the state standard,” Block said.

Regardless, Block said, Barnegat officials need to reach out to the state Division of Taxation for assistance on this.

“If Ozzie said no to their plan, they could have gone to the state,” Block said. “They still have that option now.”

“Sometimes it’s how you ask the question and to whom,” Block said.

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