| Author |
Message |
    
Mim
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2001 - 9:56 am: |     |
To those who attended or watched last night's TC meeting: at the risk of providing a further platform for his possibly objectionable views, can someone explain the comments of the speaker who implied the reval's purpose was to encourage people from Newark/Irvington/etc. to move into the east side of Maplewood? He seemed convinced that this was the TC's hidden agenda, and that it served some nefarious political purpose. What was THAT all about? |
Euclidean
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2001 - 10:05 am: | |
Mim, Let's not go there.
That speaker earned my vote for the category, "Least Constructive Speaker of the Evening". |
Napes
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2001 - 10:14 am: | |
That guy was so weird. Was he suggesting that our "borders" (as if we're some little nation or something) would be overrun by "refugees" or something from Irvington, Newark, Union, etc? How would that happen now if it hasn't happened already? I didn't get that at ALL. |
Eliz
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2001 - 10:22 am: | |
Uh I don't think he was talking about "refugees" ... there were a few shocking phrases wrapped in nonsense and it made me feel sick to my stomach. I think perhaps he chose the wrong town to live in. |
Mlj
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2001 - 10:33 am: | |
The guy was booed. Forget him. |
Mim
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2001 - 10:38 am: | |
I distinctly heard CHEERS when when he began, with his 'Robin Hood economics' remark. Then we all started getting queasy, I guess... |
Nilmiester
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2001 - 10:41 am: | |
I wasn't following his logic. Taxes get lowered near the border thus increasing the property value, that's good right? One thing is for sure, Irvington is a dangerous town, it is corrupt, drug-ridden and I know a police officer who was killed there. It is not a safe place. Properties near the border are subject to more crime. Whether or not that's PC or not, I don't care. It is just the truth. I hope it changes in the future. |
Ffof
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2001 - 10:52 am: | |
Bad taste is an understatement!...Now, just a thought, I am absolutely not defending the guy - Don't get me wrong - but if there was a point to what he was saying could it be that "how could ANYONE's taxes go DOWN in this age of budget shortfalls (town and school)...perhaps just those with revals of over 4x the 1981 valuation (i picked this number arbitrarily) could pay more and that would even out the disparity of taxes across town AND get us out of budget problems". NOT that this would be an acceptable solution! |
Ffof
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2001 - 11:09 am: | |
Go to Alceste's new post "reval -missing the point". THAT is definitely the answer. |
Overtaxdalready
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2001 - 12:59 pm: | |
When the guy started off he got a few cheers with his "robin hood economics" remark, but by the end of his talk i heard some people yelling "sit down", "go back to boston" and a smattering of boos.
Anyway, at the risk of performing a mere academic exercise, I think it's interesting to note that the land values for the reassessment are still generating valuations at over $1 million per acre. The culprit is the "site value" assigned to each piece of property as noted by the Tax Assessor last night. Using the example he gave last night (not sure if these are his exact figures, but they're close), he mentioned that a certain neighborhood may have site values of $200,000 per site, regardless of lot size. Added to this base is another amount that is determined by the size of the lot (measured as a percentage of an acre) times $350,000 per acre. So, if an individual in town owned a piece of property that was one-fifth of an acre, his/her land assessment would be $270,000 (the $200,000 site value + 70,000 for having one-fifth of an acre). A value of $270,000 for a fifth of an acre extrapolates to $1,350,000 for an entire acre. Put another way, if an individual owned 5 identically-sized lots in this neighborhood, he would own an acre of land with an assessed value of $1,350,000 BEFORE improvements). I think that was the point that people were trying to raise at the 1/16 meeting. The question that was posed last night by the TC to the Tax Assessor was "did you use an amount of $1 million per acre on the assessments?". His answer of "no" to that question was true, but it didn't address the fact that the valuation procedures used for land are generating extremely high land valuations when they're extrapolated to an acre.
P.S.....How's your day going B.A.? |
Tom
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2001 - 1:13 pm: | |
Well that's kind of an academic exercise. If another person owned 10 parcels of 1/10 of an acre, a total of 1 acre, that would extrapolate to $2,350,000 an acre.
On the other hand, if you owned one parcel of ten acres, your rate would be just $370,000 an acre. |
Overtaxdalready
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2001 - 1:21 pm: | |
My point was just to show how the $1 million figure came about, not saying whether it's correct or not. Also, from my understanding, the site charge is not uniform across the town. |
Wineguy
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2001 - 3:56 pm: | |
Robinhood Ethics?
I'm happy I wasn't the only one thrown off by that particular speaker. At first it seemed as if he was going to have something somewhat constructive to say but after his comment about the red carpet, a guy a few rows ahead of me jumped up and screamed "That's outrageous". Well he set the stage for himself there. That was a bit risque'. Though did you notice that a few people were clapping for him afterwards?
Now I am also not defending him but I would like to see Maplewood trouble free. I can relate to someone tending to be a bit bias towards some of our surrounding towns. Two years ago on my very block on a Saturday afternoon a car pulled up and a man jumped out of it holding a gun to one of my neighbors heads screaming at her and took her pocketbook and ran. It all happened so fast I ran over not knowing what happened (also not knowing he had a gun in his hand)and ran after him. Yes this was very foolish on my part, I guess it's a natural instinct from growing up in the City. That woman could have been my Mother.
Luckily the guy just jumped in his car and took off. I was instrumental in having the police track down the car with the plate number. Unfortunately they never found the driver but the car was stolen from Hillside and the same individual supposedly did two other similiar robberies that same afternoon in that area. So I could see some people being a bit bias towards the other towns not that I am condoning last nights speaker's message. He was very harsh in his delivery. |
Cfa
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2001 - 6:10 am: | |
Didn't that speaker apologize later on? |
Eliz
| | Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2001 - 2:19 pm: | |
No that was someone else. Pretty sure that guy skulked out... |
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