By Mark Rosman
Staff Writer
FREEHOLD – Municipal officials will continue to participate in the Monmouth County Assessment Demonstration Program, which means that assessments of properties in Freehold Borough will always be 100 percent of true market value.
Borough Council members made the decision after receiving a memorandum from Business Administrator Joseph Bellina during their May 16 meeting.
According to Bellina, the members of the Finance Committee met “to analyze and discuss whether to remove the borough” from the program. The participants in that meeting were Chief Financial Officer Richard Gartz, Tax Assessor Mitch Elias, Borough Attorney Kerry Higgins and Bellina.
The Assessment Demonstration Program is an initiative that seeks to assess a property at its fair market value to ensure the owner pays his fair share of property taxes on an annual basis, county officials have said. A property’s market value is determined every year.
The Assessment Demonstration Program replaces a program that had property assessments set when a municipality underwent a complete revaluation every decade. As the market changed over the course of 10 years and a property’s assessment remained the same, the result was an unequal tax burden among property owners, county officials have said.
Bellina informed the council members that “the Monmouth County Tax Board provided municipalities an option to remove themselves from the program, even though it is unclear that New Jersey state law provides for such an option.”
He said the Finance Committee unanimously recommended that Freehold Borough remain with the program and he said some of the reasons include:
• There are no non-budgeted county level tax appeal refunds. This helps municipalities in the preparation of their budgets;
• Assessments will always be 100 percent of true market value. The assessor will perform annual reassessments to review all properties and revise up or down as appropriate, so the assessments are equal to the current market value. This is more equitable to all taxpayers. Currently, an assessment is permitted to be within a 15 percent corridor, up or down, of the true market value;
• The costs of the annual inspections over a 10-year period are less than performing a municipal-wide revaluation every 10 years;
• Accurate tax assessments should yield fewer tax appeals, which will reduce costs in the defense of these appeals.
