we came home today um we'll give it one more minute supped start give it two minutes I forgot we're gonna give it more minutes the council president excuse me I'm just curious how many people have come to one of these before I recognize first time everyone for the assessment stuff many people have attended a meeting in this building before for the reassessment it's my first time coming to a oh it is all right okay now just remember guys this is you know it's a nonformal meeting right this is just a public let's just let's have a chat right so if you have questions about you know uh your your taxes or the the tax assessment uh reassessments and and how certain things are done and I believe we have a gentleman online from the appraisal company um that can maybe offer some M uh some more guidance on on certain things that uh you know to make make people help you know help people understand more of the process I do have a we'll go through the presentation it's not nearly as long as last time but um we're gonna we'll get through it and then we'll get to the question and answer but especially if there's people who haven't been here before just reminder what ask a question now sure we're waiting for Pat to come back yeah two things that I think most of people in this room want to know the first thing is uh why we pay this company to do the reassessments for us and the second key question is when property values go down are they going to adust the taxes and is the ratio that you charge per thousand going to change I'll answer I'll address all of that you say what what do they charge you want to know what they what the cost is I have a slide that goes over that how much how much we paid them for this service yeah okay yeah okay y I got that no worries know he said what or why and I was like I don't know what the right yeah all right p and just and just remember too with we're all taxpayers too right so uh me too you know and none of us like to taxes all right um I think we uh for the flag okay y that yeah give it another 30 seconds just want we're gonna just write if we could just rise for the flag and for the Pledge of Allegiance unit States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation God indivisible so this is question number three when he awarded the bid to this company to do this service for us how many competitive bids did we collect and when did we I'm gonna answer that real quick we are going to open a Q&A at the end but to answer that just real quick yeah so the bids they went we went out to bid in 2020 uh packet were sent to three companies only one returned let me to say x because I dealt a lot with the township and I don't mean this is a black eyy in anybody's nose but the uh the response time of employees they prettyy stressed they have a lot going on so having them make the phone calls to find out you just said that three companies were asked and only one responded correct yes do you have a log of phone calls made to to the two companies that did not respond no was that follow or just email sent and you expected them to see it and reply so so the well this isn't oh my gosh oh this one hold on one second R in the business I want as many estimates as possible and when people don't hunt I would then go out and look for more uh more professional companies that could come back to I don't see how you move forward with a project with only one with one job so especially is there anybody on in the town that works for the company that got awarded in no okay I'm gonna you I can take this because it's it's budget so fine purchasing um okay so one there's nobody for the town that works for the company so just to be clear that would that would not be permitted right um so that's the first thing second so to address your issues with going out to bid so the law dictates how townships go out to bid really really really sh whenever you participate in the conversation you always tell me what New Jersey state requires or what this is I want to see a council and an employees that go above and beyond the minimum requirement what took their office to do I want to see them going above and beyond so okay so I so now I'm gonna be okay okay it's okay okay so I will address that okay so um the law requires that we that you go out to bid for when you have an expense over $44,000 right um and for when it's for a contract for a certain number of years right you can't have a contract over a year for specific things and this would be one of those things right we have a multi-year contract your required to go out to bid um it's actually a courtesy that the township reach out to um vendors multiple vendors right and send them our bid package here's the bid package right um that's a courtesy that we do for those vendors that's not a requirement so we are going above and beyond to contact the vendors that hold on for one second to contact the vendors that are capable of doing this kind of work there are not a lot of vendors that are capable in the state of New Jersey of doing this kind of work so that you just got to keep that in mind right we did go above and beyond those requirements to reach out to them and let them know here's our bid package right um our qpa our assessor myself is all you did was contact these people didn't get back to we can't look like we can't look like we're soliciting we can no there's bid requirements I don't there's bid requirements we can't look like we're soliciting and favoring individual people you're not if there's 10 companies licensed to do the service you should be sending your bid package to all 10 treating them all equally okay does this not make sense and then you make phone calls to each one was it so that every Li contract getting the opportunity I'm gonna have to leave in a few minutes because I'm GNA take over the meeting and it's not my intention what I'm simply saying is there's so much wrong up there we have a new mayor a lot of great new ideas we need to clean house we really need to clean out we need to Spring out a lot of issues and by making us the Citi aware of what you're doing the Way You Are Tonight is something that needs to happen along no problem thank can I ask a question real quick what he saying don't mind if you just I'm sorry I just give you one second because I don't want to lose track of what what he was saying I just want to ask question so when you when we go out to bid right is it companies that actually put themselves into this into this database that you know when we do it that we only have these people or how does that how does that process work I mean we can't just pick up the phone stop calling people corre so right so so the bid specs and the bid package were sent out to the companies that are licensed in the state of New Jersey to do this kind of work how many how many companies three compies three there's not a lot of companies that do one of them is out of business now so there's two yeah there's two I'm I'm literally telling you the truth there are now two companies in the state of New Jersey that do this state of New Jersey can do this type of work is that what you're telling me yes currently yes you should have been like a bulldog hungry as hell going after both of them to get you estimates if there's only two companies you needed to be getting some estimates and I'd have your attorney looking into whether or not you can use companies from New York State Upstate New York or Pennsylvania and find out what the differences are increase your pool of contractors and you're going to reduce your cost drastically I have to say again there's only so much we can do that's within the no there are listen if we were to do something that is outside the confines of the law we'd be having a different conversation right now companies you should have got at least two estimates from two it's not about estimates it's about getting bids it's they're two different things it's no but no but you're not understanding legally they're two different things to have a bid you have to legally go out for bid they have to Le they have to respond on a specific date by a specific time that's not the minimum requirement that is the state requirement we cannot go out afterwards if there's someone who's a qualified bidder call the governor and you tell the governor we're a little fly on the H's rear end and we need to make an exception and is it all right if I make 25 phone calls to 25 contractors in New York Pennsylvania and New Jersey to find somebody else do my taxes assess because I need estimates you give up too easy and if you work for for me you wouldn't be able to and I got new for you you kind of work for everybody in this room okay so make phone calls get more estimates and we're not doing this just on this subject I'm GNA jump one place else because I'm talking to you a lot and this is being weigh very heavy on my mind when you talk about the MUA and way you're installing pipe you never specific so the next time we have a meeting and we're reviewing what the MUA is doing with all that money they have in the bank you need to be able to say specifically from this corner to here is 775 ft and I'm running a pipe from here to here then I'm running a pipe from here to here and that's going to cost me XYZ because the MUA I've been to those meetings then I collecting estimates they talk as v as you do and you don't talk about 775 fet you're not talking about whose property is getting the uh the pipes run to and who and whose property not getting the pipes because when you run those pipes might property you just made me a small fortune thank you very much because I can do all kinds of crazy stuff with my property so where you run those lines really matters my last subject for the evening I'm very sorry everybody Mr Mayor there I sat in a a meeting where Corey right what's Corey's last name star uh Corey over objections of people in the room and very good sense that the people in the meeting room were're making Corey approved a single parking spot for each one of those senior citizen Apartments now Cory did that I believe possibly because he really had some strong feelings about it before he walked into the room but the bottom line is simply this they made that rule so it's one parking space per living space and it's a senior citizen housing now when the subject came up Mr Mayor and I'm kind of directing this to you because you got to look into this when the subject came up people were like well husband and wife senior citizen couples are going to buy these places where's the other spouse and they talked about parking in the street and then the question came up of what happens when it snows and you can't park on the street you got to plow the roads the whole issue was they scurried the entire issue the bad thing Mr Mayor isn't the fact that we made this one exception for this one favorite son of Vernon okay it's the problem it sets a presidents if I said that word right and that means when I want to build a building on my land I can follow his example and just do one parking space per per unit I the first multi it's the first multi- dwelling building that we built in town in many years and we dropped the hammer on Poli space who the first time we were ex I don't think that was the right thing to do and you should look into you're talking about the new build well I know there's there's underground parking too one parking space per unit even though there's underground you may be under the building when you take the number of parking spaces and you're divided by the number of building people are going to be expected to live that's only one and I was in the meeting said so it is what it is okay so I'm gonna be quiet now step outside because I don't want to take over your home right very sorry thank you Mr Mayor I speak with you in the future thank you sir thank you very okay we're gonna have uh thank you Sean welc we're gonna have a um Q&A at the end we're gonna everyone's gonna have a chance there's not gonna be a time limit however many questions you want to have I'm going to get through the presentation first G try to go faster than I did last time so a little introduction I'm Kristen umansky I'm the certified tax assessor for Vernon Township we also have on Zoom Rick Delio he's the owner of associated appraisal group he's a State Certified General real estate appraiser he's also a certified tax assessor we have our mayor Anthony Rossy we also have our CFO denell BR with us today and I apologize this computer doesn't have a PowerPoint so I'm G be scrolling through a PDF throughout the presentation I'm going to use assessment terms I I'm very well aware that maybe you're not familiar with so here's just a few of them that you're going to hear me say a lot we have ad Borum taxation this is Latin for according to Value it's tax that is based on a percentage of the value of property all counties in New Jersey are taxed at 100% of value this is the most common way in the country not just New Jersey to establish property taxes Mass appraisal this is a method used to value a group of properties as of a certain date in New Jersey that date is October 1st of the pre-tax year so for 20124 the valuation date is October 1st of 2023 this is accomplished by using common data standardization and statistical testing most commonly used for property assessment for taxation purposes Vernon is not Reinventing the wheel this is these are established methods and practices in relation to assessments and property taxation sales ratio it's the ratio of a property's assessment and sale price for example a property that's sold for $350,000 and is assessed for $275,000 has a sales ratio of 78.57% the tax levy we're going to talk about the tax levy quite a bit is the total amount of money to be collected through property taxes to cover the municipal school and County bu budgets the tax rate is the amount of tax paid per $100 of assessed value the tax rate is based on the total value of all property within a municipality to provide the necessary tax revenue to cover the municipal school and County budgets which is the tax levy and then an inspection we're going to go over in detail as well it's a walkthrough of the property both interior and exterior for property record card maintenance um and like I said we'll go over that whole process a little later and try to clarify some of the confusion there New Jersey we have what's called reevaluations and we also have um two different forms of reassessment a reevaluation often refer to as a weow short they're ordered by the county bard of Taxation when a Township's assessment base meets certain criteria a revaluation is considered an emergency and must be completed by an outside firm approved by the New Jersey Division of tax station a reevaluation requires 100% inspection and a full tax map review by the division of taxation we'll go over the criteria in the next slide a reassessment can be applied for by the municipality or ordered by the County Board taxation a reassessment is performed by the tax assessor fully inhouse or with the aid of an outside firm a reassessment requires 100% inspection and then annual reassessment can be applied for by the municipality or ordered by the County border taxation it's a reassessment that is performed every year and keeps assessment in line with market value a full reevaluation or reassessment with 100% inspection must be completed prior to an annual reassessment being implemented and the inspection cycle for record maintenance is a requirement during an annual reassessment program I am very guilty of using the 10-year revaluation window of time myself but the truth is it's a h that is only required every 10 years these a criteria or reasons County Board of Taxation or the division of taxation could order reevaluation for a municipality a director's ratio of 85% or less this is an average weighted sales ratio from the director's sales ratio study a ratio less than 85% is considered to be in non-compliance a ratio greater than 100% would also indicate a revow or reassessment is needed coefficient of deviation greater than 15% this measures the uniformity of Assessments throughout a municipality the lower the percent the more uniform the assessments are in relation to sales an assessment base with a deviation greater than 15% is considered to be in non-compliance I've done a review of 2023 sales and compared them to our initial reval in 2020 the assessments that were um established then and the indication is that Vernon Township would have a ratio of like 60 to 65% and our coefficient of deviation would be around 20% had we not implemented the annual reassessment program I believe that Vernon would be ordered for reevaluation to be to be completed for the 2025 tax year approximate cost of that would be $1.5 million Revenue loss due to appeals if the municipality is losing a lot of money in tax appeals that is a clear indicator that the tax burden is not being distributed equitably and fairly based on market value neighborhood zoning changes which affect value in part or all of a taxing district if there's a major zoning change that would affect the market value that could indicate a reassessment or a reval is needed lack of adequate records if a municipality has no property record cars or incomplete records a reval or reassessment may be needed in order to create the property record Cs and finally if a municipality doesn't meet any of those other criteria after a 10-year period of time that's when the 10year uh rule kind of comes into effect I just caught myself again I called it a rule it's not but I'm totally guilty of saying it myself for sure this is a really important slide um I give this example at every presentation I give will a reassessment raise my taxes overall the reassessment or reevaluation is revenue or tax neutral it does not change the total amount of taxes to be collected and it redistributes the tax burden based on current market value so I don't know if you can see it clearly on the screen but in 2023 so if you picture this as a pizza pie the size of the pie is the total tax levy so in Veron Township in 2023 we don't have 2024 numbers yet our total tax levy or the amount of money needed to be collected through property taxation was 8,372 6369 that's the size of the pie in buron Township in 2023 we had 13543 properties that paid property taxes that's how many slices of the pie we have in Vernon Township in 20123 the average residential assessment was $262,600 that would be the size of that property slice and the average tax bill for residential property was $ 6,892 or 0.008% of the P so no matter what we're talking about today it's really important to understand that the reassessment doesn't impact the size of the pi at all it's just all it's just changing the size of each individual slice the pi the size of the pi or the amount of money that is collected through taxation is strictly established based on the budgets for the three you know governing bodies that we're collecting money for so municipality for sure the county our portion of County taxes and the schools this is a history of our tax levy from 2019 to 2023 if anyone wants a PDF of this I can definitely email it out if you want a copy of it because this is small and hard to read but essentially um from 2019 through 2023 the levy has increased anywhere from 1 and a half to 4.2% within a given year um and that again is just based on how much money needs to be collected to cover the various budgets where do your tax dollars go this is just a pie chart of the 2023 tax rate total tax rate was 2593 per $100 of assessed value the large 1. 1462 of that is the school budget and then the um municipality is the second largest at 612 and then the county at 048 and then very small amount for op space and Library tax this is how you um calculate your property taxes um excuse me anyone who's had the pleasure to talk to me over the past month knows I'm dealing with a little bit of a coughing issue so um something that happens a lot over the summer especially is in very project you know the state is almost always delayed in approving the final tax rate so we all get our tax bill for third quarter as an estimate and then and I understand why a lot of people take that tax bill and they'll multiply it by four and just like completely like Panic a little bit because that's what they think their yearly taxes are but that's not how taxes are calculated so the way you calculate the tax is you could take your assessment divide it by 100 and then multiply it by the tax rate and that's how much taxes you're going to pay um in the in the current calendar year and again we don't know what that tax rate is going to be until like June late June usually just do not multiply your estimated third quarter bill by four and then when you get your final bill understand that that is third and fourth quarter of the current year and um first and second quarter of the next year so don't add those four quarters together either because those aren't even for the same calendar year so that's really you could go on our website that's a little screenshot of our website and you can see how much you're being built for taxes for the past two years I think it goes back usually or you just do the calculation by applying the tax rate to your assessment this is our um reevaluation and reassessment history and uh the 2020 reval was actually ordered in 2013 which is just five years after the H 2009 revaluation um the reason it was order so quickly is because we were losing a lot of tax appeals um the required tax math review that is part of the revaluation process took years and actually resulted in a brand new tax math that was implemented in 2019 and cost us as taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars um that process of having a new tax map done is very ly and will Le the 2020 reevaluation from happening so it was ordered in 2013 pring 2015 and it didn't actually get put in place until 2020 the delay cost us a lot of money not just for the math but also an addition million dollars lost in tax appeals um this is actually very common it's very common for the tax map to hold up a revaluation um I know another municipality and the county went through that over the past several years hope and they finally got the revaluation on the books um as I mentioned before I believe Veron would have been ordered had we not done the annual reassessment program for the 2025 tax year um it certainly would have been needed based on my analysis of where the 2020 assessments were versus what homes are selling for now the yde annual Assessment program Vernon has a very diverse real estate market Lake communities lakefront homes condoms we have hotels that are actually each hotel room is an individual residential units um we have regular subdivisions we have Resort commercial properties we have large luxury homes we have small seasonal summer homes um very diverse in this town and it's also a very large Town um with very a lot of neighborhoods so that's one reason to do annual reassessment all right another reason is because of tax appeals we'll talk about this quite a bit tonight uh maintaining assessment at market value instead of an equalized market value takes the burden of filing a tax appeal off the property owner maintaining assessments at market value means the township will lose fewer appeals between 2008 and 2019 the township lost between $3 and $13 million in ratables per year during County Tax Board appeals this doesn't even take into consideration um state tax FL rals which were still from this time that was still dealing with those lost ratables create a tax shift towards everyone who didn't win the an appeal and it breaks the uniformity of assessment and the equitable distrib distribution of the tax burden from 2009 to 2019 the township refunded 2, 277,000 264 or an average of $27,020 per year year and taxes just during County tax Bo appeals from 2020 to 2022 oh I'm sorry 2023 this typle on that sorry about that 2020 to 2023 the township has given back $ 61,2 for an average of $1 15,35 one50 per year during County tax FL appeals here sh here so this is um a little bit of a cost analysis this came up last year um so I've just updated it based on last year data that I've had and also speaking with other assessors um so there's basically the three scenarios when it comes to reassessing we could do a reevaluation one you do periodic reassessment or you do the annual recess so this is the cost break down as fast as I can estimate it's hard to estimate what a new contract would be for full reevaluation or reassessment where bids come in at but speaking with other assessors recently bids for full reassessments and revaluations are coming in around $100 per line item which would put similar bid and burn in around 1.4 million like 1.4 $1.5 million um it's also hard to anticipate in this analysis what the Lost um money and tax appeals would be so I've left that amount blame for the periodic reassessment but you can see here or maybe you can I'm not sure how clear is coming up um so if you take into consideration the amount of contct price of the 2020 revaluation um and the tax map cost and everything that 2020 revaluation actually caused fir in P of $3,247 3 sorry 3,247 322 um the annual reassessment contract price for the five years is $492,500 um we now have a line item to maintain our tax maps and we've lost $3,840 in tax appeal so total cost so far um we still have two more years of appeals to get through it's $555 C2 for five years and then if we were to switch to some sort of like periodic reassessment here it says every five years because that's something at one point but anytime you're going to complete a full reevaluation that contract price will probably be around 1.4 to $1.5 million however much money you lost and appeals during all that time so that cost would be around half million left um anytime you decide to do a periodic reassessing also take consideration the legal that we in I have set the slide for that here's our County tax appeal of History going back to 2008 um so hundreds of thousands of dollars a year were being refunded from 2008 through 2019 on a yearly basis we're also losing ratables a lot of wait till the end or no sheet here you're BL through really stuff yeah we just wait go ahead didn't lose that Mone you just we refunded it yeah because he was charge too much money we lost $68,000 that's what I'm saying is and in reality you didn't lose $68,000 you just didn't charge us $68,000 and you didn't collect more money from no no no we re no we refunded the taxes because you were over yes no yeah but the no it's a bad thing to take people's money when you shouldn't be taking people's money but you shouldn't put it down if you lost it you didn't you didn't lose it because we never paid you that much so itop we lost the rate no I don't think no I don't think you're understanding what I'm you're not under okay else okay what what I'm just wondering is does that mean that the assess I mean if so many people are winning these appeals and this money has to go back was it done wrong to start with the burden no the issue no no no hold on hold on so the issue the issue was when the reval was done the revaluation was done in 2009 you have to look at the markets in 2009 and what houses were worth in 2009 right so between 2009 and let's say 2020 when the reval was s 2020 when the reval was sent again mess up 2019 and 2020 because I had to budget for at different times um so when the V revalve was done in 2020 there was a difference in those assessments right so during that period of time during that N9 10 years right like a lot of properties decreased in value people were aware of that some people went and fought that and they won those right because they were being overcharged they w that a lot the issue is that that reduces ratables when ratables decrease you still have a full pie that you need to pay out so the people that did not go and and appeal their taxes are now going to be paying more because that has to be made up somewhere else so that increases the tax rate the following year and also the money that we're ref however I'm saying that's you don't agree with the money that's being refunded was not budgeted Ed to be refunded that was budgeted to pave your roads or provide whatever service and now that service cannot be provided because it has to be refunded through tax and and for the for the record the township right we are still required to pay the schools and the county 100% so it's not like when we refund taxes we're getting 20 we your taxes are let's say 20% 25% Municipal right 75% County and school we're not getting that 75% back from the county and the school so I don't like yeah it's a it's a loss in in dollars it's a loss in dollars for the township but then it's charged back to the rest of the taxpayers that either haven't appealed or they're already being overcharged anyway from this administra you have to look at Mone and cut money out okay we need to do more services for less money in bur and we have to shop smarter your issue with the company who does this where you didn't formally get bids we do that five days a week eight hours a day we're doing the minimum all the time everywhere it isn't just you you're not the only guilty party or department but it's done everywhere and the new mayor is going to reduce the overhead of running the administration and that's what we're going to do don't worry about paying this company when's the next time the bid for this service comes up when do we put it out to bid next we're working on it would it would go I guess at end of this year well and I number on the ballot in November on the ballot in November I want you to have a line item where the citizens are bur in vote if you go back five or six or seven slides you're going to have three choices and those are the three choices that we could do with the type of Taxation we want and Mr Mayer I'm asking you to put this on the ballot and have the citizens are burn whether which way we want our taxes to be collected and then I want you to shake the blanket reduce costs we want a smarter business with you and I we're businessmen right so we got to run a smarter business for less money and charge our citizens less for their proper tax but when you say be slaughtered and if you need my help I do have a full-time job but I can come in part-time at help all right I'm sure there people in this room accountants and Bill payers who would volunteer some wisdom to help the town get the budget down lower my property taxes status quo they're talking about how much money they lost last year and the year before the year before that's all nice you're throwing a lot of stuff I want to see what's going to happen moveed forward all the what you talked about doesn't really really matter because November Mr Mayor you're going to have it on the ballot which way we want to do our tasks can you do that for us Mr Mayor um can I I just I'm just one second um so just a couple things so well I just want to be clear about something so ballots have to do with Council so that's not the mayor so I just want to be clear about that second the second thing I want to address is um whether or not there's a reval or reassessment program or a reassessment those are dictated by the County Board of taxes okay so at any time at any time anytime the county could turn around and say let's say Vernon decides they're not going to do an annual reassessment program right well one the county could turn around and say no you're going to do it than let them say that no hold on hold on or you could hold on or they could turn around and say okay you don't want to do the reassessment program well now you have to do a reval and if you don't want to do and you do a reval this year hold no let me let me finish so Sean let me finish and if you do a reval one year and then the year after that the ratio goes down again because of the way that the market is they can say we want you to do another revaluation and they don't they don't ask you they tell you these negative points you're pointing out need to be listed under those three choices when the citizens of Vernon vote how we want our property taxes to be collected in November you need to have all that that whole little speech good pros and cons pros and cons pros and cons under each one of the possible things you can vote for and you have to let us decide because that's our job is making decisions as us no longer in your hands so the other thing that I wanted to address to is um you made some comments about purchasing in general so I just I just want to make this very clear we have a purchasing manual in Vernon Township um and you had mentioned the minimum you know doing the minimum versus the most um Vernon Township has a rule that if there's anything over $1,000 you're required to get additional quotes whereas the state of New Jersey requires 6600 so I want to make it clear that every dollar that that's spent here over ,000 doll they are getting multiple quotes the township utilizes State contract County co-ops Federal contracts Federal co-ops those are all those are all things that every department is required to do so I just I just want to make that clear because I think that there I've heard it in a couple of other meetings and not from you that there's a misunder understanding where the Departments are just allowed to purchase things there are things that are put in place to not allow that and one of those things is Vernon Township's purchasing policy is $1,000 do or more you're required to quotes which again the state requires only 6600 mix sorry go ahead so if there's a misunderstanding obviously there's a miscommunication right so if there's a Mis there's misunderstanding that means that there needs to be proper communication explain it to us like for five if you have to so that way we can understand across the board how it needs to be right yeah I agree with you yeah I mean well I think it's the purchasing manual is not something that's like you know the p no one talks about the purchasing manual so when it comes up I understand but if it's happening in multiple meetings that means that there's a miscommunication simple right and it's nice to have you we don't usually get to of dialogue at at meetings please understand that you know we're taxpayers too no one likes this town we don't want to pay taxes believe me I wish we could get taxe you know back to that right it's like if it's being said in multiple meetings that means that there's miscommunication right I hear folks in the back talking well this is why we this is why we having they're trying to gain understanding just I'm trying to gain understanding and there's things that aren't being said and there's things that aren't being said clearly and if that's the case then you guys have to make it clear to us correct right well I think this gives us the opportunity to do that because we don't really get to have that back and forth right fix that may um there's a lot of money to be made by by vendors who are not on the state contract list okay that's like in fairness that's a hedge just oh it's on the State Contractor list those are friends and and whatever because plenty of times my husband has got many bids accepted that were supposed to be given to State contractors because they gave a far better price so that just that's kind of like what saying there are still well there are still things that we do for example for example W for office supplies right because we're also we're not just talking individual purchases right like the bid thresholds go for uh an entire a year an annual period and it's not just January December it could be like February to February right so something like for example WB Mason the township was always using WB Mason for office supplies now I'm sure you and I both know that if you go on W Mason and you go to buy like pens they're probably way more expensive if you went to Staples right and you bought like the Staples brand so what the township has done in the past five years if we set up specific Staples advantage Staples is actually through a national Co-op so we had to join the National Co-op to do that but we've seen a lot of savings there and having multiple areas to be able to purchase from um we to check those numbers you don't just you gotta go elsewhere and look for yes we do but again there are certain things that do limit us because if it's if you're talking a massive a massive amount of money that's being spent over a period of time we do have to we I'm sorry like like the reassessment company yes which is why we went out to bid but we're not getting the B that's that's that's the link that's right but here here's the issue is that there are only me if I'm wrong you have to be licensed in the state of New Jersey to do this and and approve division of tax yeah so here's the thing so there's only when we went out to bid there were only three companies this is not in the control here hold on there were only three companies that were approved by the board of Taxation the State Board of Taxation we can we can't do anything other than reach out to those three companies which is what we did okay but here's the when you say once when you say once there's only so much that we can do when you go back to the governor saying you're asking us do that are we're not we're not complying we're not going to comply with rail pay no that's well that's that's somewhere you know maybe at the Senate level uh wherever it is we gotta go there is it true is it true that you can only use somebody in New Jersey it can't be contracted you have to you well let's let's say there's a this one of the cont I don't know but they have to be approved by the State Board of Taxation so whether they're like list whether they're from New Jersey or not they have to be approved by the state board taxation there's only three companies that were approved now we're down to two so is it listen I think it's absolutely terrible for the state that there's not enough competition do the entire State the entire state of New Jersey for a service that we don't have to no it is a service that you were it is a service that the Vernon Township was required to do for a reevaluation they made the monetary decision to continue on with the reassessment program because the alternative for revaluation is currently $1.5 million and right now and that's in a one-year period and right now we are spending $100,000 less than that every single year for five years so we have a $500,000 price tag versus a $1.5 million price tag price is being fixed by the fact that the vendor knows the situation we can't do anything about that I can I cannot do is competion rather than and I agree with you and there should be and there should be more companies that do this we would love to see additional people start those companies we could choose for a hundred of them we would yes sir you could when is our terrible sewage contract expired sunet well that's that's that's not really part of this but the sewer agreement is 20 made a great bid on that one so well that wasn't done through a bid that was that was through an agreement with schuma Mountain Creek so they can build 1,200 units that never got built we can if you I would love to have that conversation with you after this meeting I don't want to take everybody's com like every body's time up with that because I could go on about it and give you a lot more information on that way and they never have an answer well they I don't think I've ever spoken to you what's your name have they do have these meetings uh how often do they have we have a meeting 130 I ask her when this Sunset it and they act like what you got do than me well I'm actually the administrator for the MUA so I don't recall ever speaking to you I also have another individual in my office that time I call it I call it I sewage right on my bill so is that why I'm paying for a l as a bedroom noway for M bad deal I don't think I don't think that like I don't I would love it no no no it has that has nothing that has nothing to do with assessment that has nothing it does not affect your taxes it has absolutely nothing to do with your assessment I would love to have that conversation with you outside like not at this meeting after this meeting that'd be great meeting or take your information down we we we'll contact you back and we'll have it got another question online I can find five and a half acres for 80,000 and my little slice of a condo is worth 100,000 we're I'm gonna go mine's worth 100,000 16th of a quarter acre and I could buy five acres for 8,000 that's what you me you're talking about an improved improved and versus not not improved one of them has a structure on it and the other one's just land yeah okay so the land is 80,000 you're saying that your your house your three bedrooms too bad his pie of land my one bedroom is worth about oh I got you we're gon I GNA go over it if I can continue the presentation I promise everyone's be ask their questions at the end here's um just again talking about savings next time could you make that bigger you can actually enlarge that so our gist of this slide is that are legal and this is for State Tax Court um and the reason I keep this separate is because State Tax Court lers on forever and uh when I first started here we had over 300 open dockets at state tax court and now sitting around 90 but um and most of that is um still free 2020 Tax Court cases excuse me can you give an example what that would be a state tax so any anything under a million dollars that appealed to the county and the property owner was unhappy with their judgment they can escalate the appeals to the state level be State Tax Court an assessment of a million dollars or overk file directly to State Tax Court instead of going to the county first so that's what we're talking about here um and like I said you know we're working on it but it's we still have quite a backlog of appeals you know one of them is you know many those doc that are open is one really large appeal that goes back to 2016 but um so right now currently even though we're still working at state tax cour appeal we saving about $27,000 a year on our tax attorney fees and also our expert appraiser who you know represents us as the expert and Appraisal reports for tax cour yes long have those attorneys been doing that service bur I don't know how long find out interest to see service out change attorneys I'm not sure it's the same one since I've been here I can tell you that I don't know how many years have you lived here have I lived here how many how many years have you worked in the town since 2019 2019 think it's time to put that out okay that's get around for new attorney just as an exercise to be sure we're paying a competitive price we're not looking to hurt the attorney we're not looking to S of the relationship we just want to make sure we're paying the right price you can be nice about it because he's gonna hear that we're shopping around these are all Daily Business things that need to be done by our staff on a daily basis eight hours a day five days a week the way I'm you work eight hours well whatever thing works okay all I'm simply saying is management Administration managers need to be able come up with alternative Solutions the way I'm suggesting them tonight and if they're not able to do that they need some better Management training they have to get aggressive managers in place that are looking to cut C and find better ways of supplying more service for a tax doll and we want to lower those tax dollars we want more services at a better price and everything should go out to P sorry I hear you so the next slide I'm G to I'll read it out and kind of give you I know it's you can't see it on there's a street in buron that has 10 more or less identical houses um all of them are on slightly uh on a lot that's slightly less than a quarter of an acre they were all built within two years of each other 1965 sorry 19 three years 1964 to 1967 ranch style home 132 sare ft um in 2019 half of those properties were PID like5 thousands in taxes and the other half would pay 7,000 in taxes with more or less the same exact house and the reason that happens is because half of those properties file tax appeals on one and the other half did not which so and the whole purpose of a reassessment or reevaluation is to bring everyone back to the same leveli playing field like a Level Playing Field based off market value so it's not really fair in my opinion for the people who are paying $2,000 more than the same house on their street because they didn't want to take the time or didn't know or whatever the reason they didn't file the tax appeal while the other half of the street did so the reassessment now over the past several years has brought them all their all instead of having a $2,000 swing and tax bills for more or less the same counts it varies like a few hundred because some of them are renovated some of them have a finished basement Etc but overall their total tax burden has remained um more uniform we're going to go over the inspection process now there's a lot of confusion about inspections frequency of inspections I have several slides to kind of go over this um so when will you be inspected 100% of the town is going to be reassessed each year that is whether you've been insed that year or not your property assessment will change based on what the market is showing in 2019 the whole was let me get through this section exp it I promise the end if you have a question um in 2019 everyone was inspected for the 21 year revaluation that's the requirement of the reevaluation in 2021 through 2025 we're doing a 20% inspection cycle so those inspections for 2021 reassessment inspections always are happening the year before the reassessment is put into place so approximately 2,800 properties are being inspected each year the inspection cycle is a requirement of the Division of Taxation and the purpose of the inspection is just to maintain the property records here's a chart showing the percentage of inception versus perc being reassessed each year so in 2019 100% of the town was inspected for the 2020 reevaluation and 100% of the town was reassessed for the 2020 revaluation in 2020 20% of the town was inspected for a 2021 reassessment and 100% of the town was reassessed for the 2021 reassessment 2021 20% of the town again was inspected for a 2022 reassessment and so on so every year since 2020 20% of the town is getting inspected but 100% of the town is being reassessed when you get your letter at the end of the year or sometimes is coming in January December January time frame that does not mean you were expected did it just means you've been reassessed and so what we started this year is we added the date of last inspection on that letter to try to clarify some of this but um the inspection by year and this kind of just reiterates again in 2019 everyone was inspected for a 2020 revaluation we are assigning generally the inspections by um neighborhood more or less so in 2020 we that was Co that's started we tried to limit our contact with residential property owners everyone had just been inspected the year before so our 20% consistent of all the commercial property in town all the tax and property in town all the vacant land in town and then residential sales that Clos after October 1st of 2019 then 2021 2022 202 in 2024 has been broken out by neighborhood and your letter that you receive every year also has your four code neighborhood ID on it is broken out so first example 2021 very high neighborhoods near war with ter p and then so on so forth so this slide just kind of list by neighborhood when they're scheduled to be accepted and they're you know we're going to try to stick to the schedule as best we can um we're in our last year of this pth so mostly condos that are going to be insed this year with a few residential neighborhoods in as well there's a few exceptions to the fiveyear inspection cycle um these are some common reasons why you might get inspected more than once in five years the first is improvements that might have been made after your last Inception that will result so if you add a deck and you were expected in 2020 you add a deck in 2021 you're going someone's going to come out and measure the deck um if you finish your basement or whatever the reason is you'll get insed again because of the Improvement being made um a property owner sometimes will request toting inspected again so um those people will get inspected more than once because they've requested another inspection be made maybe they found something um on the property front that they don't agree with um if someone files a tax appeal that very often results in another inspection being made of the property and then also when um you receive your letter and you have the opportunity to have a meeting with associate appraisal group sometimes that meeting will result in an inspection needing to be made um the opposite of this also is true so um for example like on the slide you guys the part see but where I like say hi a schedule for year two inspections right um but maybe year one they filed a tax appeal so they were inspected year one we're not going to go back and visit them again year two because we have on record that they were inspected the prior year so there are exceptions always but as a general rule of th we do follow schedule we are following a fiveyear inspection cycle the inspection process um if you're going to be inspected in the current calendar year you will receive a letter they typically go out in April like early spring um those letters only go out proper owners who are scheduled to be inspected um the associated website and I also maintain the ver Township's website under the tax accessor section um I update and they update um the general reassessment progress um and all the inspectors will have a photo ID on them the first attempt of the inspection is unannounced it says so in the letter that it will be unannounced they don't expect to get in um I know it can be stressful for property owners to just get a letter in April and maybe they don't show until November you know but we're doing a lot of sections in a short period of time and um that visit is unannounced and they're going to do an exterior inspection if it's possible at that time and they'll leave you one of these orange stickers on your door letting you know when they would like to return the phone number to reschedule you can also off to have a virtual inspection from the interior if you wish to do that um as long as you have zoom or FaceTime or some kind of app that would allow you to walk through your home and then see through um a video what the interior looks like um the interior section generally is very quick you know it's like 10 minutes maybe um depending on the size of the home but um you know they have our old record so they're they're really just there to confirm and update as necessary um if you receive that orange sticker and the inspector will come back on that day in time that they leave you um if no one is home at that time then you'll receive one of these like Yello leish green stickers and that's um just letting you know what the home's going to be estimated at because they weren't able to get in and again they'll have instructions on how to schedule or call to have someone come back out either physically or virtually um through Zoom or FaceTime um to do the inspection if you disagree with the information they leave on this little room sticker um so after the expect done or want to see because it's only 20% of the town during the same process the market analysis is being done um by the appraisers and um they're determining market value for the town so we're divided into the neighborhoods those neighborhoods are based on zoning and location and then for the condos um some sure each model has own neighborhood so speak versus hidden valid ones not so much but um anyway so we have based on zoning location or model type if it's a condo and then there's a sales review that's done for each neighborhood um for 2024 the focus of that study was October 1st 2022 through October 1st of 2023 um old sales are also reviewed and under contract MLS listings are reviewed for trending purposes evaluation model for Mass appraisal is that established based on that sales review there is is um market price versus market value just like a quick um overview of this the market price is what a home actually sells for um I did not update this the slide from the last time so it's a little bit of an older example but it still applies um for its purpose um so this is a picture of a home that sold April 12 2022 for $360,000 $360,000 is the market price for that home when you're doing a mass appraisal and you're building a model valuation and market value we're going to review all the sales within that neighborhood and after that sales review is done a market value is then determined so the market value might not exactly line up with the actual sale price of a property but that's because that's one of 10 20 30 sales within a neighborhood to quickly go over the break down of land versus Improvement on the um on your total assessment um it is well established that div that the division of an assessment between land and improvements is an administrative action it does not create two separately contestable assessments a taxpayer seeking to establish a taxable value must demonstrate the value of the entire property not merely the value of either land or improvements in New Jersey improved properties have both a land and Improvement breakdown of the total assessment that breakdown as has been held up by the state tax Court of New Jersey is an administrative action ultimately what the property owner should concern themselves with is if the total assessed value of their property represents market value so you should really just be asking to can I sell my house or home or condo or land or commercial building for the total assessment um the most commonly referenced tax score cases that has this administrative allocation decisions are um aen case from 1961 and there's a more recent case Brown versus burrow of Glenrock that went through the appell division um this there bottom line is the statute requires in New Jersey that we do break out a land and Improvement portion of the assessment there is a methodology I went into great detail on that methodology at my last presentation last year I heard it was boring so I'm not going to bore you with it today but um there is a methodology in how that's established but a lot of people get hung up on either one of those either the in gr or land and it just it doesn't uphold so if you're looking to contest your assessment or appeal it or just talk about it it's really theal assessment that you need to be looking at the land could be a dollar and everything on the Improvement they improve be dollar everything on the land but at the end of the day can you sell your house for whatever your assess at ex me and why can why does that happen why does what happen why does that happen so like that's the situation my land is assess so much more than my house okay the total value maybe I agree with maybe but to say like my profits assessed at 171,000 and my house at 89 yeah so so the Improvement portion of your assessment is established on the real property of appraisal manual that's given to us by the state of New Jersey and that's very similar to um how your insurance company would establish the cost to replace for your policy so what that manual does is calculate the cost to replace or building cost of your home and then we also depreciate it based on age and condition well I went to my insurance company because that was my concern I said my if my house was to burn down today what would you and I have replacement value my policy and um she pretty much said because she gave me a thing and saying that it would be because I have the replacement costs which everybody should check their homeowners you know every year every other year make sure because I heard a story that there was a fire at somebody's house in town last year or the year before and because of covid and all the exponential uh pricing gone up for the home for the building supplies they had to kick in like $400,000 up and above what the insurance company said so say you buy a piece of Lum actually cost $4 but the insurance company said no no no we're we're going to put more in but we're only going to the two more dollars not the four more dollars right so if my house was to burn down I I'm I'm still confused about the part that you were saying not that what my insurance person just told me but what you were saying we're taking it one step further and depreciating so there's cost to there's cost to replace new and then Improvement portion will also be depreciated based on the age of your home and the condition so it's so your total Improvement for the assessment isn't cost to replace it's a depreciated version of cost to replace um and those calculations come from the state of New Jersey like we can't change those so so then when you take that amount and subtract it from what a house sold for it implies a land value right and so that is done throughout the entire town for every sale and then we establish what we call a land formula which is made up of three parts and that's how we come up with the land portion of the assessment and that's coming from the sales review but again let get into the nitt biry of that at the end of the day can you sell when you're appealing you're contesting you're talking about your home that's how we get to the total but what matters to you as a property owner is the total um that's the only thing you can really contest I mean I'm I'm not going to tellone they can't go file an appeal and test the land por your assessment you can but here this is just too many examples of tax for judgments where it just doesn't up it just doesn't maybe I could get with you late you can the three things that they go by for the you thank you so is there a list of these amenities in a house and a price value for them yeah it's the real property appraisal manual for New Jersey house assessors so there's for example a spot for hot waterbased for yes and what is that now I have I noticed in my own house my appraisal from my hot water based Fort heat went from 12,000 in change to 14,000 in change from one to another so went up 2000 it's two years older and that doesn't make any sense when you're saying you're depreciating right so every year there's a cost conver so that year comes out so I think it's like1 but it's early 2000 the last time it was updated and then it cost conversion factor to take um into account like things like inflation and stuff like that so that cost conversion factor does change every year and that's why the Improvement portion of your assessment changes a little bit every year but but we should all have everybody will hop on a baseboard should have $144,700 it's based on also um for classification quality construction of the house and size I'm talking the heat I'm talking heat all the calcul matters doesn't matter the quality of construction it's a boiler okay it's a boiler with pipes so they all should be 14,700 am I correct well so those pipes on a house that's 3,000 ft is going to cost more than a house that's 900 sare ft so no but Theus plus same no no no you're using instead toer there's not much price there so I feel I can't change the manual I hear what you're saying but I don't write the manual I just have to use the manual um we're stuck paying for the manual and that's the problem that we all are having a problem with okay the pay these things that don't make sense with these things it's all it's all the means to get to the total we could we could you want to get to the total but you didn't mention the fact that the assesses are are able to over assess or under assess by 20% so I think that's a little it baked in the cake with that extra spot for the land so our goal is always 100% market value what you're referencing is chapter 123 and that's when you file an appeal and year that there isn't a reassessment or reevaluation so if you have a ratio of 80% that ratio then gets adjusted to It's called The Common level range to an upper upper limit and a lower limit and it's 15% but since we're doing reassessments every year actually does not apply for and that's only for a that has nothing to do with the the methodology or the assessment itself it has only any anything to do with the defense of an appeal in a year that you don't do a reevaluation or reassessment yeah is this minici needs a certain amount of money right you're GNA come to me and you're going to charge me a certain amount of money if I object to what you're charging me my neighbor over here this ni Gentleman on the end he's going to end up getting charged what you discount me the budget is the budget is the budget so if that side of the room complains of everybody over there complaints this side of the room is going to have to make up for it because the budget is the budget right so number one or two was get it on the ballot which way we want to do it we can stop spending this money come 2025 we can be done doing this wait five years and reinstitute it five years from now and change our taxes again in five years we just spent five years doing it it's over we don't have to keep doing it we can wait five years and do it again in five years and that's what I would strongly suggest now we're talking about furnaces I don't know anything about furnaces except the houses have them but the bottom line is this we need to focus on the budget because the less money it costs to run the town the lower out taxes are going to be and whether it's me spending it or the gentleman who's getting up and leaving pays it it somebody's got to pay but we got to get the budget down and spend less money that's what it comes down to you know maybe I might be a little naive but you gave the story about half the street was yes tax at $2,000 more than the other half the street well would it beho the town to say Hey listen let's do the right thing let's get those other half of the uh Street down to what it should be instead of having them to fight and and you know maybe they don't have the wherewithal they don't have the means to hire a lawyer or whatever they don't know I mean it just Curr to keep things even more even that's what we're current so that's what that's the reassessment that's the annual reassessment program you can't cherry-pick neighborhoods and certain houses that's spot assessing and that's not fair to everyone else in town so so the point of this whole reassessment program is that it's so that it takes the burden off the owner you certainly can still file an appeal and you know there's a handful of people that are winning appeals every year now and usually it's because they were estimated with the finished basement or whatever um but yeah that is some purpose of the program is to make things uniform and fair and not have these drastic swings and differences between similar properties within the neighborhood I guess what I meant was just like if you saw something was unfair and if it's brought to your attention then correct it we're not allow we're not allowed to do that it's illegal it's called spot assessing we can't do thatc to New Jersey wine items in this town so you know 13,500 tax there's also sound yeah but I tell you what is unfair is there are people that are purchasing houses that are purchasing it with in mind that this is how much my taxes are and now this reassessment in one case that I'm thinking of brought their taxes up 34% 35% 35% their right to choose has been taken away they they chose to purchase a house because of the price of the house the condition of the house and the taxes because now you're moving into a neighborhood and and this is what your choice was when you purchased this house their right to choose has now been taken away because these taxes have gone up 34% and there is now now there is a a financial hardship on your choice that you just made within the last two years essentially folks are get folks are getting driven out early because the taxes are just going up that's that's out of our children mouth the right to choose has been taken away not right well I think I think it's because um I mean the last time we had uh a reassessment right was how many years before that 2009 before this whole process started right program is supposed to prevent these these huge tax Wings is what you don't slam people at ones like that you don't you just you just don't 34% is ridiculous I mean divide that out that you're not getting that kind of raise it work I don't know if they can I don't know if they could even do something like that right so when they when they do it's all based on Market when they do a 34% right increase right like i' would have to look at it um can you tax people at 15% and then maybe 15% the following year I don't know I don't know if that's no I mean you're trying to you're trying to always come in at market value you're not I mean easing it so but the but kind of like what the mayor is just saying is when you wait a long period of time those that just increases those big shifts and swings so from 2009 to 2020 I I I'll get to you I promis I promise SE um there were homes that saw like five 67,000 increase in one year and the only reason that happens is because there was 11 years between the last rebound um so the longer the period of time in between a reassessment or a reval the bigger that changes within one year so um there's some neighborhoods yes that are going up and but it's a little more gradual there's one extreme example this year that that was not the case um but overall that shift is happening more gradual than being slammed $66,000 one year and then there's some neighborhoods that are going up one year down another year up one year down another year and overall you know people in those neighborhoods are saving money and then there's the complete opposite end there's people who have their taxes go down a little bit every year so for every dollar someone's going up another person's going down because what Sean just said is true it's just redistributing the burden of taxes I totally understand what you're saying um I would have to look at your property um to kind of know for sure how much the taxes have gone up on it but um yeah you're realtor anybody anybody who's buying a house should take the S price willing to to pay for the house look to their agent have their agent call this very nice professional young lady and say if I buy this house for $335,000 what my taxes right to Second take your name and number and she'll call somebody back to tell them how much their taxes done your friend who bought a house and got punched in the nose got $8,000 their real estate agent should have been a little bit more aggressive no offense okay uh the question we need to be dealing with right now are what happened in the past or reviewing all the numbers that's all fine but we need to be thinking about do we want to repeat the service for five more years or we want to wait and that's the question we need Mr Mayor on on the B okay do we do it again or do we wait five years and then do it again and then well I think the way the the way the program right works I understand you know we got we got the we got got the two years comp the getting ripped but we don't we don't know 5 years if they going to be you know another company out there right we can't hold because we're waiting for other company we just accomplished it though right now according to the professional young lady on the end in this month March March of 2024 everybody's done wait no no no you have to do the cont we have one one more yearend this year right when the election is at the end of this year it's either we're done we did the whole town over five years we're done let's wait five years and do it again you understand though that all of your all of your assessments will stay the same that they are currently though right what I know is that that young lady is gonna watch the market and when prices go down I'm gonna be here demanding that prices be brought down that doesn't that's not she can't legally do that you're missing that need to cut on the budget remember those phone calls you didn't make that cost us all that money we need you to make those you mean the the bid packets that were sent out and and all the other calls that don't get made to get us the best possible price for the services that we need and we need the enti administration doing it okay one phone call two phone calls if you need contractors and you can't find them call me up all right just Google my name you get I might actually call you one more open questions okay um half both um so the tax impact I just want to go over this real quick um because we do send a letter out and we have an estimated um impact to your taxes based on the reassessment every year it's always in the letter it shows you what your current year taxes were and what your proposed or um new assessment is with an estimated amount of taxes so what that is is number one those letters are going out in December and January so the budgeting process has not even happened yet so that rate does not include any change so for the budgets or spending or any of that kind of thing so the way that's calculated and this is always available on the associated Group website it's based on taking the prior year's tax rate and dividing by the current Year's change so in 2024 we took 2593 that's the 2023 tax rate and you divide it by 1.097 so there was 99.7% increase in the total rable base inment after the reassessment and that came that comes out to an estimated tax rate for 2364 now your letters went out at 2363 what has happened since then is a few people had some meetings we made some changes because of those meetings and so it ends up being 2364 but again it's very important to understand that that does not take into consideration any change in up or down increase or decrease to the municipal count County School library open space Etc budgets so that will change a little bit but just so you understand when you receive that letter what that actually means it doesn't mean that that is what your 2024 tax bill is going to be it's just the impact that the reassessment had on your tax bill um and then every year I encourage people to look at this um it goes into detail of the total assessment from the prior year and the current year and the average um impact a residential assessment for the current assessment and then here's two examples where example one they're going to see you know a little bit of an increase in their taxes um about $100 due to the reassessment and example two would be decrease of about $130 um assessment and that onine I do apolog um this this presentation was available online um so I do I tried to print out but it was Tak it was 27 pages so apologize for not I didn't know how many people were coming so it's hard to where was it line um it's on on our uh burning Township website is there any way to get that posted on Facebook as well it's on it's also the presentation is on my uh mayor Anthony Rossy Facebook page I if you're following follow you but on the town's Facebook is it the town doesn't have a an official Facebook page so f Facebook probably be a good source yeah it's it's on mine and it's also on the township I'd like to share an observation um I share the concern of many people about um concern about taxes um my concern especially focuses on the accuracy of Assessments um I've spoken to a lot of people I've read on Facebook that people have challenged um the assessments they're being they're being assessed for a finish basement they don't have a finish basement Etc so I think the accuracy is a big issue that people really shouldn't have to worry about the other thing is when you look at where dollars are spent and this doesn't discount what Sean shared um about reducing cost through competitive is I spent a career doing that and um the CFO shared the policy that the town follows for competitive bids which is really very um commendable because um having a, threshold to get competitive bids it is it's very demanding um corporations uh wouldn't spend the time on ,000 uh but but the the real issue is how do we reduce taxes property taxes in in Verna um there's a couple different ways again going back to Sean we can reduce operating costs um or we can bring in new ratables that will share the burden and and that I think is probably the most realistic um opportunity simply because when you look at the pie we spend less than 25% of taxes on operating the municipal budget now there are there are really two types of expenditures there's direct costs and indirect the direct are are fixed costs you know but benefit salaries Etc um Insurance costs those those are very difficult to to get savings that's nearly impossible from a government standpoint so when you take away the the fixed cost from the discretionary cost you're talking about a very small amount of dollars so if you save and an ambitious um goal is to save 10% of across the line so you're saving 10% off a very small portion of of the tax um that we need to collect so at the end of the day let's say you can reduce cost by 10% year one it makes it twice as hard for year two to reduce another 10% so on so forth so um I I see where Vernon should focus on is is accuracy of Assessments um absolutely continue aggressive uh bidding make sure that's done correctly but we need to focus on bringing new ratables into the town and and I'm just curious we have P gudo here who who served the town for many years he's he has great expertise in this area P I'm I'm just wondering from your perspective what do you think um is the greatest concern in terms of uh property taxes how do you mean concern where do you think opportunity is that the impact or burden of uh the cost of operating the town um is on property tax um yeah private property taxes what what do you think is the best grab to getting this under control if you're asking where we can uh reduce our property taxes you hit you hit on it the point is Township has about a let's see for argument sake a $30 million budget uh Miss brigh what would you consider to be the uh the set number that we need for uh fixed overhead out of that $30 million fix overhead yeah salaries stuff that we counting Debt Service counting Debt Service like my answer honestly my answer is $30 million I mean the only thing the only thing that we put aside like for capital is probably around I'm talking I'm talking about what's discretionary versus what's mandatory by tax uh by uh uh budget you know by uh contractual implications in corporations the the the rule is that 66 to 7% of your spending is in I think so I think it's probably more than that because we also have pension expenditures that are set by the state um I mean and I would I would include something like health insurance is included in that so I would probably say 85 to 90% of it so basically out of a $3 million budget you're going to probably have 10 million I'm sorry one3 million 10% that you have discretionary income set on MH so if you were to save 10% on $3 million you're looking at $300,000 right 10% up yeah on that3 million the rest is not something that Council Township or anybody can say we're going to reduce unless you want to start looking at the reduction of services because realize this the number of police is predicated on the ability to respond yet your your roads the amount of roads in Vernon don't decrease they remain the same and in many cases they increase DPW you have a set number you want to make sure that your roads are plowed during winter you want to make sure that your uh your potholes are filled during the summer and yet the roads don't change in terms of the amount so DPW remains about the same your your your care of parks excuse me I'm talking Mr I I'll I'll I have a question and I'm a citizen you may be a citizen but I'm also talking exactly what say you're saying that these cours you have no control over they're fixed that's right what I'm saying is and I'm sorry to do this but you mention the DPW if you go over to the DPW and you sit with a manager and you say show me where people were like so what x amount of men where were they running a gpw is a very serious business okay and what we've done is we've taken good guys who know what they're doing and we move them up the ranks but I don't know that they have the skill set that they need and maybe we need to give them the skill set so they can be better managers to manage our DPW at a lower cost and where people are and what they're doing during the course of the day gets very expensive for taxpayers so that every Department there's a manager there who with better skills can run it for less money and we need to take that attitude across the board every manager needs to come back and say how do I reinvent what I run here and do it for less money right and you're going to you're going to look at these savings that you base uh on $300,000 available area for $3 million is what you just said a few minutes ago right if you save 10% you can't reduce that $3 million to zero because that's a discretionary amount the amount of the amount of paper the amount of pencils the amount of all of those things are included in that discretionary area and you're not going to reduce that to zero it's an impossibility you know some of the things too that I was I've been going through you know the budget and and so many things that you don't realize especially when you're when you when you have to start replacing you know uh emergency service uh life- saving equipment that has and the life I mean the price leg I mean I want it to vomit that's I mean there and you don't have a choice you have to replace this stuff you want sharing Services that's there's only so right um this is why you know I there's only so much you can cut off of you know the operating cost here so where else can I go right where where is a lot of our money spent so we're spending money elsewhere let's not doing those shared services right which is what I've kicked off with the Board of Ed um so you know that's that will take a little time but it's not too far in the future by all means shared services don't mean wait a minute shared service don't mean the complete abdication or the re you know loss or revision of those those amounts they don't just disappear what we're doing is we're Shifting the weight we're taking a little bit of the school budget where they were going to build the potholes from the parking lot just like the May Stewart and we're getting the DPW to go there but the key but there's a cost to that there's a yeah there's a cost to that managing managing the number of hours our DPW spends anywhere there's a example I'm going to jump all the way back to the pump track and the trail right not going to discuss it just think about that thank you nobody nobody can tell us how many hours the DPW spend that's not true that was listen you're getting far field accountability across the board Mr Clark yes sir you're getting far field the question that was raised to me by Mr knip where I thought where he thought I believed we should be able to see our attention grow to now cutting isn't really enough to do anything of any significance we need growth we need more R and gentleman over here previously was talking about the MUA seers without those sewers you would not be able to even have any consideration of substantial growth right now on the on the on the tablet so to speak we have 55 homes that are going units that are going to be uh put on the board for uh attachment to the MUA in the center of town we also have 175 to 180 new homes going down on 94 across from the uh 208 homes across from the condos from across from the condos all right and those are going to be those are going to be uh put on the mua's um uh scale good now you got a fe accomplish that needs to get some steroids and do it three or four more times thanks okay that's what it comes down good job you know I've sat here and I haven't said anything purposely because this is the mayor's meeting but to say that you want to have more bids that's nice to say but we don't control that and there's no you don't why don't you because there are bid specs that every bidder has to fill out there you you require uh documentation to this to the state of New Jersey you require a license in the state of New Jersey and and you say call the mayor you just don't call up the mayor come on be sensible what kind of a businessman believes that they they're going to pick up the phone and call the mayor the farthest the the closest you may get is probably a secretary secretary going to tell govern I'm sorry the governor the governor May the Govern well can I say something I'm very glad to hear I was listening to the last town meeting and what the mayor is doing with the shared services I don't know what percent now according to what you're saying Pat there's only a percentage that is shared off the cost then it's not TI Fort like no so basically the way it works right so that if we send out the way it would work hypothetically is that you send out out DPW workers to fix the catch basins right there there's a that's a cost to the township Sal so right so that would be calculated out and that would be buil to the school versus the school going with a private contractor who it's going to cost X Y and Z more so that what happens is there's a shift like council president rosuto was explaining it's a it's a shift in costs but there is a cost savings so if it was originally and I don't know what the numbers were but let's say it was $15,000 and it only cost us in time and materials $3,000 that's a that's a Sav that's a savings for the school now ultimately if the school saves well they need to save if the school saves right it should reflect on their budget we can't control their budget that's my problem that's my problem we're doing our no no no no no no no we legally cannot and I know you don't like the word I went through this today I went this today with the CFO about we are a type this is a type two type two School District the mayor and the council have absolutely no control control of their budget none so any I am I am not a school ad the the councel the mayor and the council can inform us and educate us about the schools and we're going to come up with good ideas to help the school cut their course I think the best way to do that is a school board meeting Mr Clark you gotta go to the school board to that it's easy I'm saying can you please stop talking because what you're doing is you're passing on bad information you simp no making a suggestion is different than telling people what we can do we know what we can do but going and telling you or telling the community what school board is doing is presumptuous on our part we don't know what they're their planning is we don't know what their long-term debt Services all of those things become that's their prerogative and you should go to their meetings to hear that right all right and when you hear then you raise it then you raise the question we have no ability to put any other influence on the board other than the mayor has gone over and spoken to them I have gone over and spoken to them on occasion and pointed out what's happening within the township and let us work together the shared services agreement doesn't make costs disappear from our from our budget and go to their budget or vice versa it removes hopefully a middleman you know if we can have some extra time where a DPW worker can work a chainsaw and knock down a tree where they can't do it because they don't have facilities or a person to do it then we can do it on their behalf and they don't have to call a tree service as an example so the point that I'm making is they have their way of doing things they have their budget they have their professionals they have their auditor and you need to speak with them we in turn have the same thing it's we're replicated but we're totally different like I said the board of vet has has opened up the door for you know for for allowing us to come in and and see where we can save some money so and I and I I've said it before I applaud them for that they they really do are trying to cut but there's only so much that I can get myself well them right I because they were so in Deb and cut the school buses and this is all this is a new administration too right so whether or not they're doing it because because of that has problems or it could be a combination of both but this is not the this is not the question that we're addressing either we increase revenues or we decrease Appropriations and if we were to decrease Appropriations the amount to make any significant difference you wouldn't really notice it because what's ha what's happening is the value of your homes are rising very very they're almost exponentially when you start looking at it really when you're seeing how homes go from 335 to 4 25 in a period of three to four years that's a you know it's a very stiff move why is it happening because of demand people were willing to leave the cities because they didn't want to get involved with covid and and whatever and move here and invest that time and money it and now what you're running into is you have these this reassessment that you find going up every year if you were to stop doing this reassessment right now and the market were to to remain steady for at least a year a year and a half two years or whatever as Mrs brigh said your taxes would remain the same they're not going to change but you get a major blowup like we did in 2008 when taxes when your value of your home went down $450,000 T home went down to 350 325 maybe under some cases under 300 then your taxes would be reflected on that market but if you don't but if you don't if you don't no excuse me if you don't stay in the program it's going to be there and you're never going to experience that reduction until you sell your home rather than if you when taxes are reassessed your budget at now is $80 million so the H home costs go down now youy to run it so what does that overall value of town goes up the tax rate comes down and then if the market were to correct itself s reverse and the overall assessment of the Town went down the tax rate would to then go up to balance and that's always true um but again if so you but if you're in a neighborhood that went down more than um average somebody's P ta yes that's right how much is the serviceing year it's the contract is 98,2 for the last four years of the contract the first year was 100,000 so it's a total 490 something thought I get back now it was like $490 what $500,000 you want to call even, year over those five years how much more taxes have you collected uh so again it's not as a result of the reassessment but the levy has gone up anywhere um so Le when I say l i mean the budgets have increased and that's not just Municipal budgets all the budgets have increased anywhere from 1.58% of four um so since the reassessment is 3.2% um down to 1.58% per year um and that's going to happen regardless of the reassessment that's just the budget I can't read that but can can you tell us what the overall budget so if we're at 80 million now what were we at 2019 2019 was 72 m898 690 51 so I just want to be clear the school budget in 2019 increased I believe it was 6% the following year they increased 5 and a half percent the year after that they increased three and a half percent so and you're talking their budget is a lot bigger the municipal budget has held stud 2021 2022 2023 has not changed at the municipal level for those for past three years um it did change from 20192 but the past three years the municip municipal not excuse me I'm I'm not going to say the budget but the the what's the word the amount to be raised by taxation the amount to be raised by taxation has stayed the same for for years question you mentioned that the town would get reassessed if we or let's say we had a market blow up like we did in 2008 right the town would get reassessed right let's say the assessment of the Town doesn't go down what happens so it's always a balance so the way you get the tax rate is you divide the total ly into the total amount symol of an equation it's literally taking the 80 million 372 636 that me to collect and divide it into our total rables of almost three and half billion dollar and that's the tax rate so right but if the town gets reassessed yes and the assessment doesn't go down well the the no no no it so it would have if you're getting reassessed and the market is going down your property value has to go down right are your taxes going down right that's what I'm no no because you have no because you have one pot but we're still paying high taxes so it depends so creatively right like we have to come up with some Creative Solutions to try to offset the balance right so here every year people's taxes go down as a result of this program but so you know that it's usually about half it's usually hold on it's usually half of the people's taxes go down while the other half goes up that's that's it's one big pie that's going to be divided right so and right now the market is not the easy way to know if you're one of those people is like this year the whole rateable base went up 99.7% so if you went up more than 99.7% you're going to pay more tax if you went up less than 99.7% your taxes will be less um and that's the same with the opposite where happened so the town as a whole went down 5% in value and you went down 8% your taxes will go down and someone went down 2% their taxes would go up even down I'm not saying the town goes down I'm saying what happens if the town's taxes gets assess gets assessed and it stays stagnant but everybody else's home value goes down I so the levy so the amount of money to be collected stay the same same and then went down the tax rate has to go up the amount so the still have to collect the 80 million the hold on hold on hold on the amount to be okay the amount to be collected through taxes that $18.9 million right that's based on whatever the budget is that year and the valuations of the township so like that amount to be raised by taxation is solely for the mun it's solely to cover the municipal budget and all the other right um Appropriations with revenues that we have if if that amount to be raised by taxation stayed the same and your and the valuation of the township went down I mean the the taxes stay the same tax property taxes go down yeah the valuation is property value is property valuation right so the valuation of the town is the valuation of all the properties in the township so if your house is wor $230,000 and that's what it's like assessed for right like that's that's part of that valuation of the full Township so in order to calculate the amount to be raised by taxation it's I mean it's an it's a formula right like we have the total Appropriations including the schools and the county the operating cost to run the town doesn't go down just because our tax yeah okay sure we could be here all yeah sure no something is not making sense I'm trying to something's not making sense it's no common sense if you have $80 million and you have say uh 200 homes why don't you just divide the 80 million to the 200 homes instead of taking directions from the state that's putting pressure on you to follow their system so that's I mean so hold on hold on okay so so one okay you're talking you're yeah you're talking about dividing taxes equally across everybody can come no hold on but you're saying you're saying that we should divide $80 million across every piece of property no matter what kind of property I'm just kind of like the system is so uh complex but the real the real thing I really want to say and to truly understand as a tax assessor how do you become one how did you learn this you went to school you have to you have to take um you have to take you have to be certified by the state of New Jersey in order to do that but to but with whom the state the the state New Jersey sets the test tax assessors got to be certified and how often every three well the first cycle five years every three years after that and then you have to pay for that yeah and then the County tax assessors where do they get certified with the state right now the state tax assessors they National assessors I I I I researched this a very long time there is an International Association assessors associationa I aao that's an International Association for all assessors and being that uh we are being um infiltrated by globalism and new world order this system began decades ago so if you don't do your job you lose your job they'll somebody who will and they instruct you how to put this system through and the system is so you can explain all you want it still makes no sense and it was never like this 50 years ago 60 years ago the taxes the amount of taxes that we paid 50 60 years ago it it it was it was minor I mean people five could go get a job get a car get a house put his house put his kids in college for the salary he made and they're going towards this new globalist New World Order and that's where I believe and you know it because this country is falling apart and we are no longer um United States of America the corporation we are now a federal not a federal a um Republican um we are a republican are we are there is so much going on in our country and something's GNA happen huge and if you want to take a huge step to really think and think out of the box to for the people that are supposed to govern not the state not not the country the people supposed to govern because we are self-governed so we need somebody who's going to say we've had enough this system isn't working because it's choking everybody so that's all I we got to take some calls um let's do Chris Brady Chris can you hear me sorry I got we hear you okay thanks uh yeah sorry I couldn't come there and yell at you in person um but I got kids at home no I'm just kidding um so yeah I mean kind of what the lady before was saying but like less of a q andon bent um there's a there was a nj.com article about ghost towns in the next like 50 years or so and Vernon was ranked at like number two or three in likelihood to become a ghost town and I'm thinking you know what what's effectively Happening Here is you're bringing uh property values to the market level you're acknowledging that the market level is inflated or the market value is inflated so in effect people are going to be driven away over time and there's no really infrastructure to draw people back in I mean hopefully the schools are in a good in a good place but I think um what you're seeing is a big risk of becoming a ghost town and I'm kind of curious you know someone who moved here in 2022 and has had their property valuation increased 30% and then 10% again this year so that my my taxation has gone up 30% and now it's going up 10% um curious like what the vision is here in terms of bringing in people when the cost of living here is going to be higher I think that problem is is not just in Vernon right I think it's across New Jersey that that you're seeing a lot of people leaving the state right because of all the high costs um and all we could do is just try the best we can with trying to keep our cost down um and and work with businesses right to attract businesses and develop bring some more like the assessment portion of what you just um stated just to clarify so if your assessment goes up 30% it doesn't mean the taxes go up 30% because every year since 20 2021 it went up a 10th of a penny or a penny um every year since 2021 the tax rate has actually come down so in 2021 tax rate was 3143 2023 I I think you got to ditch that that slide with the pizza pie it because what's really happening is I'm I paid 11k 2022 it's 14k for my tax in 2023 I mean I know what's leaving my bank account you could you could do the gymnastics around tax rate and assess value all you want but like bottom line I know what's coming out of my my well talking thank you thank you Chris um we got just we got to take a couple more I will'll get to you one second I don't I don't know too much that's really the collective go ahead I can try well does if the population is getting older okay in town how much of effect does that have on our tax system because yeah from what I understand so even if the tax is going up if the majority of the taxpayers now are more seniors theirs is not going up so so so they still pay the full amount and then the state of New Jersey refunds them the difference um listen where is that money or income tax right that's where that comes from but um so so still know you know what I'm saying they still pay the full amount and then they'll reimburse the difference trying to get there trying to get there they penalized Savers because if I had 401K I had had that so they penalized me couple years thank you hey Jesse Jesse how are you um I I don't really know what to say at this point I had to wait two hours just to even be able to comment while we heard the same people comment six seven eight nine 10 times I do apologize Jesse um yeah got away from us so it's okay all right um what my concern is this you know we don't need to hear what the process is we know the process we don't need to keep hearing over and over again how to calculate our taxes we know that what we need to hear is when is this annual reassessment going to stop now I think I heard somebody say that the annual revals are ordered by the county now you know that's not true they can be ordered this the one we're in now was not but harest okay stop right there thank you the one we're doing right now is not when you say things to the public like it's ordered by the county you are misleading okay and again as I said before I don't need to know how to calculate my taxes I've been doing this for 35 years way long before you and Donell have been doing it the bottom line is that the problems that so many people are having we had a zoom conference where we had 34 people on the call and the stories that we heard were horror stories we didn't talk about how to calculate your taxes we didn't talk about what the process is what we talked about is stop the insanity with the annual revals and when you make statements like it's ordered by the county you are misleading one of the most intelligent comments I heard any elected official say came from Brad Sparta actually a couple of months ago and what he said is you have taken away the Public's right to appeal their taxes why is that because if I appeal my taxes by the given deadline it's only going to be eight months before you go ahead and you raise them again so what are people going to do appeal them year after year after the year after year you know I don't need to be shown pie charts to see that this percentage goes to the school this percentage goes to the town this percentage goes to the county oh we have no control there's nothing we could do about any of that I'm calling to say stop telling the people that the county ordered it annually you know can any one of you tell me can any one of you tell me what New Jersey state law says about how often you have to do a reval don't take my time away just please answer that question how often do you have to based on law do revals so it's based more on these criteria and so it could there's no set length period of time it's it's the it's the ratio 85% or less a coefficient of deviation greater than 15% too much revenue loss during appeals neighborhood zoning changes lack of adequate records and then if none of those um criteria have been met for reval to be ordered then that 10year marker is when that comes into play but there is no set number of years the 10 years only comes into effect if you haven't met these other criteria sooner than that so for can I just I don't I'm not going to take your time away Jesse I had um when we were ordered for the 2000 for the reval that was done in 20 in 20 for 2020 yes that was ordered in 2019 20 2015 my understanding is that was ordered in 2013 for the 2015 tax so so it was ordered in 2013 and we had done a reval 2009 right so four years after we did a reeval they ordered because of the ratio just the ratio was the appeal number of our ratio was over 100% at that point and as a result okay not a 10 it's not a 10 years that I just wanted to show like for an examples it's not necessarily always 10 years no I I never said it's it's def know I was just kind of reiterating um um what I am saying though is that so you know do it every five years just stop the annual Insanity because people are being taxed out of their homes and you know they are you know they are you have one year left in the current contract with the assessors you know we don't need to hear oh there's only two companies in all of New Jersey we don't want to hear that we want to hear when are you GNA stop the annual reassessments because you don't have to do it annually the county does not order it annually you've got one year left on the current contract even if you don't do every 10 years if you don't do every eight years even if you do it every five years for the love of God please stop the annual that's where all of the problems came in and as I I said in that phone call that we had and I have a recording of that because we recorded our meeting you will hear the horror stories the mistakes people being assessed for having addicts when they don't have addicts people being assessed for all kinds of things when they don't have that I'm just going to finish it right here and say this is our third such meeting no no offense to you mayor you're doing a wonderful job in trying to address absolutely everything I'm very impressed but this is the third such meeting where we're told this is how you calculate your taxes this is who we have to hire this is how you do the pie charts please just stop the annual Insanity that's all I'm going to say thank you for making me wait two hours hours to say it it's okay it's okay thank you I'm the I'm the new guy I made Mist I know I said I'm very impressed with everything you're doing all right thank you thank you all right got Peg toass hi Peg Peg hey thank hi thank you for uh taking my call um first of all I want to thank mayor for holding this meeting I do wish though you would have kept better control of the in intrusions by the public and and making them wait until the end to give Kristen a chance to do her presentation without interruption it it was very uh hard to follow the way that it went having that been said when I was on the council I can assure you that we spent every amount as I'm sure you are mayor every amount of time bringing our budget to the minimum and in hindsight I can say that our budget was good and I'm sure that coming forward your budget will be so right down to the absolute bone where that takes me is to this I'm not sure about the Board of Ed but I know they have a lot of contractual issues to deal with and I'm sure that they are also under the same stress and it also brings me to the county which I will say in remiss I am not that up on how the county spends their money so I would say this as a taxpayer in Vernon trust our elected officials trust our elected Board of Ed and trust a county officials if you have done your homework and elected the people who are qualified to be there if not don't go into that box and just push a lever because you recognize the name because it comes back to haunt you ultimately we need to be aware of who we're electing why we're electing and what their experience is now having said that I will say that I am and have said this for two years in favor of the annual assessment because I think the figures show it works now having uh a lot of heard a lot of things tonight from a lot of people who are complaining about it nobody has taken away your right to appeal if there is a mistake on your appraisal go to the assessor and look at your card it is your responsibility as a taxpayer to be sure that your records are correct if there is a discrepancy take it to the first level discuss it with the appraiser discuss it with the assessor office and if need be take it to the county but this is not totally on Veron this is also a taxpayers responsibility and I'm tired of hearing that Vernon is out to get everybody Vernon is out to screw everybody it's not true we're just trying to pay our budget and our expenses to run our town in a safe and secure manner nobody's out to get anybody if you think you've been unfairly treated speak up you're a taxpayer and you have that right thank you mayor for letting me speak thank you P have a good night we got one more caller and you too thank you it is always every year someone's right to file an appeal the deadline to do so um is May 1 it's done if your assessment is under a million dollars it's done at the county level first if you're unhappy with your result there you can escalate it to the state tax court if your assessment is a million dollars or over you can file you can skip the county all together and go right to State Tax Court in full transparency the stuff in Tax Court as I discussed earlier it sits there for years so you know if we could handle that the county first great if not it's your right to go to Tax Court um and then we have uh Karen Taylor hi Karen hello Karen okay I'm sorry I was muted that's okay okay I work in the legal field and I've been listening I'm I'm newer up here I've moved up here two years ago and I have a couple of multifold questions um I I understand a little bit better how you're doing these analysis but uh from what I understand about uh the market analysis uh it's not supposed to be done generally just by neighborhoods sales it's supposed to be done by comparative market analysis I.E uh homes that are of the same nature same size uh and uh value um being weighed against each other as comparable sales in the town and uh what I'm not understanding is the grouping of sales uh I.E a household next to me for $400,000 but it's a lot larger home and it has a a greater floor space in value than my 1245 square foot Ranch uh so I'm trying to understand how that works just grouping um and the second thing is why aren't we being provided with the comps uh so that we can see what they're utilizing uh to make those Market assessments um that's of concern to me and uh a third thought I had in listening to your presentation tonight and these are just things that are coming to mind uh the land uh as far as being usable land I mean I can speak for myself I have a very small plot of land um uh less than a quarter of an acre the front yard is all septic and the backyard is a mountain of radon uh so an assessed land value of $200,000 seems fairly uh outrageous for you know land that's not very usable but um that's a whole another parameter to take into consideration uh and my last question is uh being on a private road where we don't have uh our potholes paved actually our Road dord Terrace is in deplorable condition uh we don't have uh any kind of plowing or any Services really uh genuinely I would like to know how that can be brought before the council to make that at least a public road where we have those Services provided in that our taxes are going up just like others but we don't have those what road is that what dorf FR terce I think you you're also G to look at like the Landy boort approvals for that development oh okay so the the sales used are available on the associated appraisal Group website you could download them thank you um it's if you have a pen or it's in your letter as well and it's also linked on the gr Township website under the tax assessment page um it's nja aag.com so you can download that they make that available every year and so this year it's all 2022 and 2023 sales um that were part of the market analysis and you are correct we are it's not just specifically within the neighborhood itself but it is comparing like homes to others what what you're I don't know if this is what you're asking but what you're not going to see is um something similar to if you were to refinance your home and have an appraisal report done that's 60 pages long with three to five comps adjusted that that's not what Mass appraisal is if you were to file an appeal and the township had to pay for that kind of appraisal report we would at that time um but um Mass appraisal is done based on a group of sales not just these three reviews for your property in your property alone if that makes sense but you can view all the sales that were um reviewed as part of the market analysis um every year it's always available on their website and how did that change uh from you know the past law wherein they had to use comparative market analyses sales to now being able to utilize just a generalized uh grouping of sales oh it's for the establishment of the assessment it's always been this Mass appraisal model I don't know if rig has more input than I do the C the appraiser but um it's always been done that way and then for the appeal is different so an appeal is done that's one the township um does and part of their defense utilize specific sales but the mass of appraisal model has always been based on a group a grouping of sales to value a group of property so essentially if I have the only way I can have it really examined for a comparative map market value is to do the appeals if you wanted I mean I have in the past when someone has um ask like a really quick little grid um of comps I think you know support an assessment but um usually they're coming to me because they disagree with the assessment I say okay I'll take a look and I make this little grid um it's nothing fancy but um it's always triggered by someone contesting either informally or formally through an appeal you know the appeal grid that's used um for the defense of the appeal on the township level is much more elaborate than what I do just for someone coming in um and that's just because that's assess of County requires us and then at the state level and sometimes at the county level we have an appraiser we have an expert appraiser um that will write a full appraisal report many pages long um but it depends on the case my main concern is uh the the DraStic increase in valuations I guess and that's why I keep asking about the comps because um essentially I just I just purchased the home within a two-year period I've had two walkthroughs um the last walkthrough being in October of last year brought it down actually a little bit and then I got this appraisal uh wherein they increased it 36,7 $700 in value in from October until January so these are these are very concerning um increase incremental numbers uh and and I don't have any kind of understanding as to how that could happen so significantly in such a short period of time it's I'm just looking at your street so like for example if you don't mind me using your street as an example um there was a say of a 1596 squ foot home in 2021 uh sold for $315,000 again in 2021 a 1248 foot home sold for $280,000 that's 23 a 17752 foot home so these are drastically different in size just the, 1500 to the 1700 foot home that's sold for $415,000 and that's fairly consistent to what we're seeing not just in burning but throughout the state right it's been huge increases in value over the past three three or four years or so um like I said when I compare 20 I haven't done it for 2024 yet but when I compare 2023 assessments um excuse me 2023 sales to what they were assessed for in 2020 I mean the ratios are like 50% so they doubled in value since money and then on top of that um I do track the um you know of the home sold in 2021 and sold again in 2023 like the difference in value between those two sales are often 30 plus percent over a 24mth period of time I mean that's over 1% increase in value per month for this for the same house the same condition as both sale transactions um and there's several I mean there was one that sold in um 20123 uh it's I in front of me but um say it sold in April it was on the market someone bought it and then I don't know why but they sold it again in August say and that alone within one year short period of time was over a 30% increase in value for the same exact condom no no renovation done nothing so where does it come from it's coming from the market okay U and and and as far as my uh other question with regard to um the services that are offered is you know when you're uh talking about maintenance of streets and everything how do you get that addressed with Rego I mean our like I said our street is in terrible disrepair and I feel you know if the taxes are going up that we should have some say as to having uh repairs done potholes fixed uh you know plowing uh because we don't have those services or for terrorist it's um I like the uh like the community garden just trying to figure out where you live I don't I don't know if I don't know if it's a Township Road or a not it's not it's a private room I mean it was I don't I don't know because I wasn't around when that development was established but I would assume that when those homes were built and that development was created whatever was done at the land use board at that time they had decided that Road when it was being constructed was a private roadway and it would be the responsibility of the homeowners that's not unheard of that's actually the norm usually is when a new development comes in it becomes you know either the obligation of the private homeowners or some places form a homeowners association and they take care about themselves or individual dues um how do you get that reversed I mean you're talking about houses that were built in the 60s they hav have no they don't have an HOA um so I mean I would recommend that you probably reach out to the land use board and find out what kind of approvals were done to L use board from that time okay because it's not a Township Road so no it's it's it's you have to bring it up to Township standards in order to have it taken over by town right and that's the other thing if it's not at township standards I don't know what the standards were back then um it would have to be brought up to the standards of the Township in order for the township to even contemplate taking it over okay thank thank you Karen good thank you thank you we have more hands you know let's say goodbye to Rick he's been on for a while um which one hey Rick yes no thank thank thank you um I guess you can drop I me we we already went way past our time but I I just I just want to thank you for your time I appreciate peace from the appraisal company uh yes you're welcome and and uh I didn't find the need to uh intervene because I thought Kristen did an outstanding job in explaining everything couldn't have done it better myself great thank you thank you thank you sir okay bye uh we have Denise Denise Denise's iPad Denise hi um my name is Denise heart and I have Kristen assessed value and and I'm I full disclosure I'm a realtor um but doesn't mean I'm saying or doing anything the way it's done for assess values but my understanding is for the for all time as our taxes are based on assessed values assessed values come from the market correct yep okay so speaking to the person on dfr and the $415,000 home that you spoke to I know that home it was part of a comp I had to use for a sale in Vernon Valley Lake which fell within the distance that an appraiser would use for a comp and I mean that house was totally renovated it was amazing but I can tell you other homes in that area that had a high value of 375 and up that had 1,700 square feet or more so I I'll I'll speak to my own home I'm over in Sun Valley my assessment came in at 303 last year it was at 306 since covid um since covid our prices have more than doubled you said that um I bought my house in 2005 for 294,000 when the Great Recession came my property value because of the Great Recession I dropped under 200,000 it took until 2019 for my home just to get back to a about what I paid for it and now since covid and I don't know if people really know what's going on with real estate I've tried through various um forums to tell people uh from a realtive perspective exactly why you're seeing all these high prices in Vernon there are right now 71 properties for sale and they're not all they're not all properties that you can live in there are about 15 H in great Gorge which are full-time living there are about 33 single family homes through the rest of the community and then the balance of that is minerals Appalachian Black Creek and two properties in Tall Timbers according to the census we have 8,972 households in this town we have nothing we have nothing our our our clients for the realators will tell you ask them we have more many more buyers than we do homes to sell and in Sussex County we have 62,000 and change for the census and as of today we have 285 homes for sale so this is why your prices going up because I had a house in Highland Lakes that my folks lost and there were 17 bids on that house and my client was number 16 out of 17 lowest bid and they they went way over asking price this isn't going to be forever excuse me just yes one moment your number of home for sale I mean your residencies in the township is actually a little bit light probably close to 2,000 all right I think they're probably closer to 10,000 10,000 Plus in terms of residences based don't dis yes I don't disagree I'm going by the the 2020 censes that says household from 2018 to to 2022 it says 8,972 I don't disagree with you that there might be more I can only use a number that I had something to refer to understand that but to rein I think he's saying he's reinforcing reinforcing and that right now we're looking at a real estate market that is you know Supply driven meaning there isn't any and there's a high level of demand and you're yet you're seeing significant demand based upon what Supply is there at an interest rate for mortgages that's over 7% and the homes are still selling and they're still selling thank you and yet if we see what's going to happen let's say there's a change in the federal uh in the rate uh put up by the the fed and that interest rate drops uh down to say six or five and a half percent or begins to show a downward Trend now you're going to see a bigger move in your supply but right now even with the static of 7% interest rates and the low de the low Supply within the count within the township you're seeing an excessive you know demand level because in multiple uh the multiple quotes on individual homes and that's what's driving up the tax the tax valuation the the the assessments and and I I keep people keep asking me what's going to happen well if you stay with this eventually this is going to drop yes you know if you see these interest rates plummet to four four and a half three as they've done in the past you're going to see the amount of Supply you know increase substantially because people are going to hope that they were where they were saying I'm not going to sell right now because you know I don't know where I'm going or whatever but if they start putting their homes on the market at this increased uh or lower interest rate then everything begins to drop including the assessed valuation and then when you would expect to get the re the difference when from where you were when it was at 7% and you held off to now when it's at 4% and you have a huge supply a backlog you're never going to get that amount of tax that was put into your home that was imputed into your home back you're simply not going to get it you're gonna be stuck Mr rudo a couple of things just to add to this number one the country is short 8 million homes because new construction stopped with the Great Recession but the one thing I was calculating for myself and this has to do with the assessment my $300,000 assessed value if we went back to a normal market and a normal Market actually appre has historically appreciated better than what I'm going to use but at 3% if I calculate 3% every year appreciation my assessed value hypothetically in a perfect world could potentially in 10 years be 403 my taxes would go from 6,900 to 9273 if you wait 10 years to reassess me just me I will have to come up with an additional $2500 in change in 10 years that's that's where if the market goes back to normal which it eventually will I have no crystal ball to tell you when because we have no inventory and the world the CPI and all the other things that make up the data analysis of this doesn't have a crystal ball on when this is going to happen but when it goes back to a stable Market of course we all want our properties to appreciate this is our Dream for you know having a a nest egg maybe when we retire and the reality is when it goes back to normal it's still going to appreciate do you want to wait 10 years and have to come up with that much more money or when it's stable Iz has have a nominal increase because right now we are seeing huge increases every single one of us I went from an assessed value of 260 last year to 300 303 and I can honestly tell you my home would sell for 315 to 320 not not inflating it that's what my home's worth in this market I don't want to wait 10 years to have to and I don't want to wait 10 years personally maybe five I I'm not saying I'm necessarily 100% for every year but I definitely don't want to feel in 10 years I have to come up with 2500 I'm done thank you thank you thank you we have um Frank I AP if I pronounce this wrong P TR hey Frank hey Frank Frank hey how you doing can you hear me yep hey Frank you're on hey how's everyone doing tonight good how are you good so here's I say it's it's not really a question it's more of a statement so I bought my house here you know my childhood home thankfully I'm lucky enough to do that um back in 2016 for 153,000 um I'm just going to ramble off some numbers so in 2021 right after the assessment started was valued at 262 in 2022 it went up to 287 in 23 it went up to 346 and over a 50k increase this year it's set to be 375 another 35,000 increase let's say so I understand the reasoning behind the yearly assessments I get it I feel like it was horrible timing because what happened was and what's still happening is people are overpaying for these houses this is not a realistic market and everyone's being taxed on it and that is literally unfair to the taxpayers and I just hope I pray to God that when home prices start to fall again because a recession's going to happen that our taxes fall with it for some reason I'm not going to hold my breath on that because I have a very good inkling that when you know all this Revenue the town's generating from all these from all these extra taxes you guys are collecting in in essence that's what you guys are going to be spending so when we go back let's say and and I'm only paying you know 7,000 now in taxes because my home value went down instead of 9,000 where's the township and the schools going to come up with that extra money that they're used to spending that's that's my concern so I you know I'm gonna put this out to the public I I hope everybody who thank you who really feels their taxes are unjustified goes and and challenges them because I think that's that's our only next step to do a Mass Appeal thank you I I I've always said it too I always felt that the timing was was not good and is horrible on this the best I could do is just uh you know still operate as as if we're in our recession right and try to keep our course down um and I get nobody has a crystal ball I get it but you know when we saw the Runing on the wall when we saw what what people were paying for your houses we should have we should have held off and let the market stabilize that's my two sense thank you Frank thank you so thank you guys you're welcome thank you to clar again we have to collect the amount of money we have to collect no more no less the reassessment doesn't change increase revenue for the town at all we still just collecting the 80 million just excuse me not just it's not I'm not trying to say that's $80 million isn't a lot of money it absolutely is but the reassessment doesn't change how much money we have to collect it's just redistributing paying what so if the assessments come down we still need to select the 8 million then maybe it's you know 83 million to be um the assessments coming down doesn't change how much money we have to collect just like assessments going up doesn't change all a balancing act so if the Investments as a whole go down the tax rate will go up to compensated if the if the assessments as a whole are going up the tax rate comes down to compensate for that not on an individual basis either so what I say compensate don't get me wrong there's 45% of the town that will this in 2024 who's going to see an increase in their taxes because of the redistribute redistribution of the burden and 55% will pay less because of it this year that just happens to be the percentages for 2024 but at the end of the day we still have to collect the amount of money that the schools the mun ipity and the county need to operate no matter what the assessments are thank you anyone else have anyone who asked to ask a question I just have one quick one on the um the annual assessment is there like an analysis done so have periodic versus a could you not do a periodic with like a trigger where uh you know home prices went up x% or down x% it would trigger then that we needed to do a reassessment we didn't have to do them every year where we're spending that money to do the assessments each time yes you didn't have big fluctuations you know so it the it really comes down to then the cost of the different and I I use the term options very lightly because and I know Miss paladini this out earlier if I said that we were ordered for the annual reassessment then I clearly just spoke um this reassessment was not ordered however an annual reassessment can be ordered and has been ordered in the within the county um within two municipalities and then there's other municipalities that have just applied and opted in and we happen to be one of those but um that it really comes down to cost so if you're doing an annual annual reassessment program is more considered assessment maintenance on an annual BAS the cost of that is about $100,000 a year and that's because they don't the company doesn't have to allocate as many resources in one given year as they would for a oneoff reassessment or revaluation so if we're only inspecting 2800 properties instead of 14,000 properties um we see a savings there because of that so if you do a one off re assessment pick however many years in between you want this division is taxation requirement for that is 100% inspection in one year and those bids come in at $100 a line item so Garden that's over $1.4 million Earth is $100,000 a year so you could in theory um stop and then if the market changed to a full reassessment and say that happened over a three or four year period of time I don't understand and this isn't my decision to make I don't make financial decisions in this town but wouldn't you as the taxpayer or the mayor or the um uh What uh the council excuse me I just kind of like lost it in my brain um pay $300,000 over that one year period of Time Versus one and a half million I don't know but you know that's it's not a small difference in price a a lot of Roads could be paid for that money a lot of whatever service you guys me in this town could happen for the difference in cost here and that doesn't even take into consideration the amount of money um refunded during uh appeals during that period of time cost for attorneys attorneys and all that kind of stuff but it's really just a cost analysis of financially what's best for everybody um and the fact of the matter is to do it all in one year periodically costs a lot more money than to just maintain it on an annual basis yeah can I just so I just want to piggy back off that just again to to kind of like make this clear so right now it's costing us about $500,000 over a fiveyear period a revaluation we're allowed to by the state break out the cost of a revaluation over five years maximum right so we would have to take that 1.5 million and break it out over five years you're going to be paying $300,000 plus interest for one rebal that's good for one year which means means a year later if whatever the ratios are off or the coefficient whatever right they can come back and say you need to do it again that is a that didn't happen no they did no they didn't but they did do it in 2013 okay so four years l no no no four years after we did a revaluation so we did a revaluation in 2009 four years later the county ordered that we do a revaluation now because of the condition of the tax maps and everything else it took us between 203 1 and 2019 to actually do the revaluation um we had to pass um a special emergency appropriation for all the tax maths to be done we had to pass another special emergency appropriation for the revaluation to be done um the revaluation was paid off in 2022 um that was the last time we appropriated for that but that was a $200,000 cost plus the cost of interest because the town's had to take out a note to pay it off in that one year so right we're not we're not talking about just $1.5 million we're talking about $1.5 million plus the cost of a note and you're looking at at the least for 1.4 million right at the least $280,000 a year for five years when you could have $100,000 a year for five years it is literally like um project that price going forward forever that price was negotiated six or seven years ago that $100,000 a year that was negotiated long before they started right everything else went up that likely went up as well it could yeah and and and it like it could go up but as Christian Christen explained I mean do I think it's going to go to $280,000 a year I don't see 280,000 that doesn't gonna go to right I I mean I don't I don't foresee something like that happening I mean we could reach we will reach out to Hardon and uh Newton right is the other one thaton newton Franklin yeah and we can see what they're you know what they're paying right and what that would what we would kind of expect come 2025 um or just right 2025 is when it would have to be decided so um this year the new tax maps why do we need to spend money on tax maps excuse we did so we did that was that was man that was mandated we had to I mean the condition the condition you're ordered by we're ordered by the state so like I mean you can still I don't understand why we spend all this money on stupid tax maps this is all things that at probably at the the Senate level um where they create these things it's not here but I think people are you know and correct me if I'm wrong right I mean we should only be seeing one knock at the door right every five years yeah yeah yeah so what so what did happen to be clear right and and she right exp come knocking every year right and I know we had the back to back and believe me it frustrated me we had the reval and then the reassessment program started had to start after that right because it's it's kind of like a maintenance thing if that makes sense so we don't have to get to the reevaluation Point what happens if there is an error I just I just was told about this property tax assessment card that you could get from the tax accessor which I never knew about came on me anyway there seems to be an error on mine how and who do I talk through about this come to me contact Kristen yeah you just come to me and we'll go over it there is so there's timing issues and just so to you ton you let me know but here's sure we'll do that and I get get your phone number but just because this is something a lot of people want to know there is I am constrained by deadlines that are not in my control so once the tax list is finalized which by Statute is January 10th right but here we out I I had to usually in like September October I have a feel if I'm going to need an extension and the only reason I ever file for an extension is to allow for these informal meetings um I like to have at least three weeks of that available for you guys for the property owner so in September October if the inspections are progressing and I can anticipate inspections are going to run through December I'm in the County Tax Board in the early like fall time saying I'm going to need an extension because I want to offer at Le at a minimum three weeks of meetings for resents because in that it's so important that in that 3-we period of time that when you receive your letter to everyone should review their property card and have the meeting then because then we can make that change for the in this year for 2024 once the tax list is finalized and that happened February 2nd this year that's when I asked for the extension till I can't make the change unless you file an appeal so it just makes it I mean it cost you $25 F appeal and and these aren't things that I can change so that's kind of the process we're at now so let's review your property card if a change needs to be made you'll have to go through repeal process or wait until next year those are the two options unfortunately I'm not saying I personally agree with that but that's kind of just the law and the statute and that's kind of what I need to follow so yes let's review your property card go over it and then we'll I can walk you through the appeal process to have it corrected than like to just again perhaps I'm repeating myself to offer solution so far we haven't really heard a solution how to Abate property taxes in the future again I'll say the only realistic way uh and ultimately we have two decisions we become a town where we don't care about the cost of taxes usually that's the case where there's a superior school system uh quality of life issues etc etc that's where the millionaires live um the other solution is we become a financially viable Community which increases the uh burden of taxes into the commercial Arena where where we have lag so far behind that the township um has great opportunities for and I'm going to underline smart economic development that doesn't mean bringing in a big box a company well first of all they won't locate here uh it's not going to be bringing in Industry they won't locate here it's about leveraging our our great assets as a uh environmental recreational entertainment uh Township and I think if we concentrate on appealing to that those Industries we can uh dramatically over the course of time increase um the ratables to take this burden off of private properties um I look forward to hearing from the uh the chairman of the uh Economic Development Committee again the this this option of course doesn't happen overnight but I understand the chairman of that Comm is going to work very hard at looking for I know he will and I look forward to it so I want to wrap this up we're we're almost 50 minutes over so uh thank you everyone for for coming out today and sharing us your your concerns and thank you Kristen Dell Pat thank you guys thanks again thank you everybody time if anyone has mua questions I can answer those too this was refreshing experience good I think um you know the time the time it's PA so yeah believe me I would love to have these during the day so we have to St you know