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Pnp
| | Posted on Thursday, January 11, 2001 - 9:54 pm: |     |
Why does this need to deteriorate into an us vs. them situation. Why does the Jefferson area fighting to have their valuations reduced necessarily mean that the Hilton area will see there's increase. Does certified get a number they have to meet that the valuations have to add up to? That doesn't seem likely. I've heard about lot's of people in the Jefferson area that will see there taxes rise by $4,000-8,000 but the biggest decrease I've heard in the Hilton area is $1,500. I was never very good at math but please help me out here, |
Hismom
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 6:46 am: | |
No one has answered Michael's question - and mine: What exactly is the "dividing line" between east and west. I have never thought of the town as being separated (I guess I am naive). Fairness in tax distribution is what is important. I have been in homes near the village in desperate need of repair and ones near Springfield ave that are fabulous. We moved here 2 years ago because of the community atmosphere. Is this gone? Will anyone explain this east/west business to me? |
Napes
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 8:49 am: | |
Hello! I agree with Hismom and Michael, too. I don't lump my house in with those in the "Hilton" area, because it's just nowhere near them in terms of aesthetics, lot size, size of house, etc (plus I have a 9-minute walk to the train, so it's not really Hilton area). And, for the record, my taxes will rise from about $16K to $18K. My home was appraised at around $700K or so. But I am just EAST of the train station. So obviously there is a huge middle ground -- call us "Middle" or "Prospect Area," if you will -- that is being left out of these Hilton vs Jefferson discussions. As I've tried to point out above, it is not as black and white as "east and west" (oh, and LibraryLady: no one is saying black and white as in race...surely you've heard the term "black and white" to denote something that is overly polarized...too cut and dry? re-read my comment and you see nothing racial implied). For anyone curious about this east-west divide, let's also not forget the huge middle area east of the train station and west of, say, Maplecrest Park, which includes the Crescents (North and South), Prospect St., and its environs. |
Njjoseph
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 9:19 am: | |
Sorry, Napes, but Joso did say 'black v. white' as in race. Librarylady and I both reacted to it. |
Librarylady
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 9:38 am: | |
Napes, EB1154 asked for suggestions to use instead of Eastside/Westside. Others used Black/White. I never referred to those terms in a racial way nor did I intend to. Perhaps you protest too much. Jefferson and Hilton are simply more accurate and less divisive, imho. |
Damellon
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 10:06 am: | |
I'm totally confused about the acusations that anyone on the "west side" was getting away with anything !!! When I moved from Norfolk to Clinton in 1990 my taxes went from $4000+ to $10,000+. When my friend moved in 1996 from Plymouth to Walton her taxes went from around $6,000 to over $10,000. We've had all of our little "adjustments" to higher and higher taxes since then. Now we're going to be bumped up to $15,000 - $17,000+! You mean that the "west siders" should have been paying $17,000 or $18,000 all along?!! Are you crazy? People would never have bought another house here at those rates! They would have looked in Millburn or followed half of the other ex-Maplewoodians out to Berkeley Heights!! All this "east side"/"west side" talk is very destructive!! We all bought our homes knowing what the price and the taxes where and we were approved by banks based on these rates. I don't think anyone was burdened or "getting away with anything" until the township decided to draw such lines. |
Marie
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 10:12 am: | |
Another way to look at the East/West dilemma might be to look at how the schools used to reflect neighborhood "classes" before redistricting. My understanding of the "dividing" lines were as such: Marshall/Jefferson was the "right" side of the tracks (West and wealthy) Tuscan and Clinton were the "middle"( middle class white) and Seth Boyden was the "wrong" side of the tracks (East and black)Perhaps, redistricting, the Demonstration School, the CCR, the Special Incentive Loan Programs are all part of the bigger plan to "blur" these perceptions of the different current neighborhoods in Maplewood. All parts of a larger attempt to ward off white flight - kind of ironic isn't it? |
Jem
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 10:18 am: | |
Your point being that "well-enough" should have been let alone, I assume? |
Melidere
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 10:35 am: | |
Damellon
i have no idea what kind of 'lines' you think some official 'drew'. The values of the properties (mistakes notwithstanding) are the values and taxes are based on those values. You pay a percentage of the total tax based on the percetange of the total value that your house represents.
As jerry's numbers show, your houses on Walton and Clinton appreciated far more than the houses you left on Plymouth and Norfolk. I'm sure you haven't been complaining about that.
Again, according to jerry's numbers, the people living on ball terrace, whose homes have an average value of 225k have been paying almost exactly the same tax as the homes on Winthrop and baker whose homes have an average value of 382k, or almost double. (7,253 on ball terrace and 7,593 on Winthrop) What exactly do you think is fair about that?
What part of this process do you not understand?
The current tax on those two sections indicates that at the time of the last valuation, the two areas were priced almost identically...so the long-time owner of the houses on Winthrop have seen the values of their homes appreciate almost 163,000 more than on ball. That gain is protected from tax and is available to provide for collateral on school loans, or home improvement loans (with interest that will again be deducted from taxes) or to simply sit as a cushion for retirement, subject to yet another exclusion from tax with the one time exemption after age 55.
The people who live on Ball terrace have no such cushion, and their taxes are paid NOW out of precious disposable income.
The tax benefits of owning your own home are extensive and generous, but do not come completely cost free.
Is there some reason why they should? |
Nilmiester
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 10:36 am: | |
Though something needs to be done on Springfield Avenue, we will be hit with another increase to pay for that too. |
Rheims
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 10:36 am: | |
I think the Civil War analogy is totally appropriate. So to answer this string's original questions I would recommend that the area around Prospect, say between Valley and Yale (if you continued its line all the way to SO) be called the Border States. We have a foot in both camps. |
Tom
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 11:08 am: | |
The West Side has officially become radicalized. Several of the letters in yesterday's News-Record are so off-the-wall, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Homeowners on the other side of town have seen unbelievable equity growth on their investments in the last few years. And the class of "long-time residents," who plead for even more sympathy, have made profits of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Do you know how much equity I've gained in my 4-bedroom house in the 11 1/2 years I've lived here? $2000. It was on the market two and a half years ago, and trust me if you had a white face you were not shown this property. It's very, very difficult for me to get worked up over someone sitting on a $200K equity gain having to put a small fraction of that back in.
The arguments against the reval sound like this:
"Okay, so we did our homework, invested well, got lucky and benefited from a strong economy. Don't penalize us for that."
"20 years of natural economic and market forces has resulted in their homes appreciating more than others..."
Emphasis mine. I take exception to the disinformation that there's anything "lucky" or "natural" about it.
For years now the "Jefferson" crowd has fought tooth-and-nail against anything that might alleviate the boundaries in this town.
Any school redistricting plan that would send more minority kids their way;
Springfield Ave. redevelopment;
A blind eye to steering by the real estate industry;
The CCR and its efforts to offer incentives to integration.
These huge equity gains were made by artificially supressing the market on the east side, thereby artificially creating a shortage on the west side. Well, now that this group has learned that property taxes are based on ... well, property.
Here's more:
"young couples struggling to make ends meet...will suffer tax increases of over $5000 a year..." (all those struggling young couples with $500K houses on Wyoming, I guess? You'd have to be totally insensitive to not burst out laughing.)
And my favorite, "what harms one neighborhood harms all neighborhoods and what harms one side of town harms all sides of town." Absolutely right. Isn't this what the liberals in town have been saying all along?
This isn't Robin Hood, this isn't socialism. Property taxes are based on the value of your property.
Notwithstanding all this, Certified has made a major error in not taking into account the new tax burden's effect on pricing. As Mr. Mousseau intelligently points out, "if you hold the total cash flow component constant...and increase the property taxes...then you are reducing the market price of the home and rendering the initial higher revaluation an overevaluation." Quite so. And while the algebra probably isn't that simple (a recursive formula such as this would involve calculus), one hopes that a firm engaged to do statistical work has someone on staff up to the task.
The answer is not, "scrap the reassessment," as Mr. Clark somewhat disingenuously suggests, but to recalculate the entire town based on reasonable economic models that take into account lower sale values on the west side, as well as higher sale values on the east side.
Scrapping the reval, now that we on the east know that we've been getting the short end of the price-war stick, will only radicalize us as well. |
Melidere
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 11:45 am: | |
I, for one, am thrilled to see all these financially astute minds who are pointing out ways to reduce the effects of the valuation by incorporating the accurate information that increased taxes will reduce property values.
I'll support them just as soon as they take all that creative energy into devising a formula which will rebate the some 6 million plus dollars that some of this town has been OVERPAYING for gosh how many years. |
Nina
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 12:23 pm: | |
I live in the village area and actually think our valuation was not too off base - until you take the increase of $4,000+ in taxes. Suddenly I'm not so sure I can get $213,000 more than we paid for the house 2 years ago. I don't mind paying my fair share, it just seems unreasonable to expect people to absorb an increase of $4000-$9,000. I'm not sure why some think the Jefferson area should just suck it up. True, some will have no problem absorbing the astronomical increase - though many more will no longer be able to afford to live here. |
Jmadison
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 12:28 pm: | |
Tom: I had the exact same, should i laugh or cry reaction, to the letters yesterday. As some wag said about the death of little Nell, you'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh out loud at the plight of people sitting on a windfall and crying about their taxes. My east side "investment" went from $190,000 in 1988 to $203,000. My last tax bill was for over $7,000.
But I don't understand, at all, your criticism of Certified. It's not their job to take into account the possible ramifications of their assessments. How could they? And as Melidere points out, if they did, then the reval has no point. |
Marie
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 1:01 pm: | |
So, while the Jeffersonites were fighting to keep their boundaries clear, why weren't the Hiltonites doing the same? |
Nina
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 1:17 pm: | |
Jmadison - who is sitting on a windfall? I think most of the people who bought in the Jefferson area did not purchase thier homes as an investment - rather as a place to raise thier families. Or, for a signifigant other group it was a place to raise their families and now enjoy thier retirements in the the comfort of a ccommunity they love.I guess sadly it will turn out to be an economic windfall as they are forced to sell thier homes. Emotionally though, for the people affected, it will fell more like a kick in the gut than a windfall. |
Jmadison
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 1:19 pm: | |
Tom and Melidere: i forgot the most important point. I went to the NJ statutes. .NJSA 54:4-23 directs the assessor to determine as of Oct 1 of each year, the full and fair value of each parcel of real property...on the basis of what, in the assessor's judgment, each such parcel would sell for at a bona fide sale by private contract on Oct. 1." That is the assessment that gets submitted by Jan 10 of the tax year. Thus, the ramifications of a tax increase on the market value simply can not be taken into consideration. |
Tom
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 1:27 pm: | |
That being the case, those who complain about their increases don't have a leg to stand on. I cautiously suggest that they begin lobbying now for another reassment this fall. The adjustment that's bound to happen would mean that their tax burden would drop in 2002.
If it's done "each year," as the statute mandates, and not every twenty years, these huge swings won't happen. But please don't waste your energy getting this one thrown out, because redoing it will end in pretty much the same result.
Any old-timers have any ideas on why a reasses hasn't been done in so long? |
Face
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 1:33 pm: | |
I think it comes out looking like those who made better investments, get penalized the most for it.
Glad those who say they made a paper profit of $13k over 12 years, on an investment of approx. $190k, aren't managing my portfolio. They do want to run my government though!
The smell of Socialism is in the air! |
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