Hopatcong Extends Tax Deadline

By Michael Daigle

While residents may be rebelling over the reassessment and tax increase, they will have a little more time to pay the piper.

The grace period for property tax payments now due was extended to Aug. 30.

Mayor Sylvia Petillo said the state treasury department approved the borough’s request for an extension based on the confusion that the current reassessment created.

The original due date was Aug. 12.

Absent from last week's meeting was Councilwoman Estelle Klein who faces charges following an incident Tuesday in Netcong and Roxbury.

The council in late July faced residents angry over the results of the reassessment.

The new reassessment done over the past year dropped the total value of  the borough by 30 percent, which lowered the values of the majority of homes and forced up the tax rate.

The reassessment was done last year at the behest of the Sussex County Board of Taxation because the borough’s assessment  to market  value  ratio had reached 114 percent, Mayor Sylvia Petillo said.

That meant that assessments were on average 14 percent higher than average market values for homes, and if unchanged the imbalance would have risen to 118 percent this year.

The borough needed to stem the tide of tax appeals that followed the 2007-08 housing market crash and the effects of a  2008 revaluation, Petillo said.

The borough faced 360 tax appeals in 2012 and is anticipating more than 500 this year, she said.

The council offered a sign-up sheet for residents to meet individually with representatives of Appraisals Systems Inc., the company that performed the reassessment.

Resident Jennifer Johnson, who said she missed the July meeting when the taxes were discussed, as the council to explain the action.

She said she bought her home in 2006, and refinanced last year.  The value of her home was set at that time at $40,000 less that her original purchase price, she said.  But the borough’s new assessed value is even below that and her taxes rose, Johnson said.

Petillo said they borough sought to reassess certain neighborhoods last year  but the county tax board instead ordered a full reassessment.

The result was that  while most homes in the borough dropped in assessed value, in some neighborhoods of more expensive homes, the values did not drop as much as they did for homes in the less expensive neighborhoods.

Petillo said Johnson should speak with the borough tax assessor and sign up for an individual meeting with an Appraisals Systems representative.

The assessed value of the borough’s 6,077 residential properties dropped from $1.875 billion in 2012 to $1.320 billion in 2013.

That change reduced the average residential assessment from $308,590 to $217,139 for 2013,  a drop of $91,451 per home or 29.6 percent.

Petillo said that while the total 2013 tax rate for the borough, including the municipal, local school and county budgets, rose less than 1 percent, the drop in valuation drove the tax increase.

The total 2013 tax rate for the borough, including all school, county and municipal taxes, was 3.07 per $100 of assessed value.