Category Archives: taxes

City Council, taxes

Council adopts transitional budget

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The City Council last month adopted a transition year municipal budget, covering July to December 2011, as the city moves from a fiscal year (July-June) to a calendar year (January-December).

The increase in the municipal portion of the tax bill for the two quarters ending in August and November are expected to be about $18 compared with the same two quarters in the previous year, Chief Financial Officer Frank Ruggiero told council members at the Oct. 11 meeting. The upcoming February and May quarters likely will see an $18 increase from the previous year as well, he said.

The average home in Rahway, assessed at $133,000, will pay approximately $1,522 in municipal taxes for the half-year, according to Ruggiero. In the last full year budget (July 2010-June 2011), municipal taxes for the average home were about $2,416 (Remember, municipal taxes make up about a quarter of your overall property bill, with county taxes comprising about another quarter and school taxes making up about half). The transitional year budget totals $23.396 million, with a tax levy of $16.326 million. The total state Fiscal Year 2011 budget is $44.91 million, with a tax levy of $31.166 million.

Some line-items in the budget show jumps of 50 percent, Ruggiero said, as a result of some departments being more seasonal. For example, the Recreation Department has more expenses during July and August while the Department of Public Works might have more expenses during the fall relate to leaf pickup. Ruggiero said he expects the city to go for an accelerated tax sale sometime in the late spring of 2012, as the state doesn’t allow a tax sale for a transitional year.

The City Council voted 8-0-1 to adopt the budget, which included the Special Improvement District (SID) budget and SID properties. The lone abstention was by 6th Ward Councilman Samson Steinman, who said he abstained to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest since he’s executive director of the Union County Performing Arts Center (UCPAC) and sits on the board of the Arts District, which now receives SID funds.

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City Council, taxes

S&P gives Rahway AA rating; debt ‘moderate’

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Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service assigned a AA rating and stable outlook to Rahway in advance of its $11.65-million bond sale this past spring. “The city’s tax base has experienced, what we consider, limited, but stable, growth; it increased by 2.1 percent since fiscal 2007 to $1.55 billion in fiscal 2010.

This equates to a per-capita market value of $134,775, a level we consider extremely strong.” That net debt as a percentage of average equalized valuation was 1.4 percent, as of March 1, while the statutory limit is 3.5 percent.

“The city’s overall debt burden, which includes overlapping governmental units, is a moderate $4,943 per capita, or 3.7 percent of market value, and debt service accounts for a moderate 8 percent of operating expenditures. Other than the bond issuance for the Merck tax appeal repayment, officials do not plan to issue additional debt in the near future,” according to the report.

Here’s a breakdown of the city’s valuation, by class. Notice that “Industrial” used to be about 24 percent of the total and this year is down to about 21 percent. The total for “Residential” has remained largely unchanged in recent years but still jumped from 64 percent of the city’s total to 66 percent this year, while “Apartment” is up by more than 12 percent, jumping to more than 3 percent of the city’s total.

The almost 4-percent decline in the tax base in 2011, according to S&P, is likely the result of the tax appeal by Merck, as well as the general economic downturn. It appears that the valuation is expected to drop another 1.3 percent next year as a result of the tax appeal, barring any other new changes.

The tax appeal settlement knocked off $62.7 million from Merck’s 2011 assessment to $249.75 million, which totaled property taxes of $27.7 million, according to the mayor’s February letter regarding the appeal. The company’s 2012 assessment will be reduced by $82.4 million, to $230 million. A review of property tax records shows Merck owns different 19 parcels in Rahway, ranging in size from less than an acre to 37 acres for a total 91 acres and broken down in this Google spreadsheet.

If any other interesting tidbits come out of the bond sale documents, I’ll post them.

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tax appeals, taxes

Top 10 property taxpayers

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The top 10 taxpayers in Rahway make up about a fifth of the city’s total assessed value. As part of an $11.65-million bond sale in the spring, the city put together a slew of documents on the city’s debt and tax assessments for ratings agency Standard & Poor’s.

Details of the bond sale, as they relate to redevelopment, will be included in an upcoming post. For now, here are the top 10 property taxpayers in the city (here it is an Excel file, maybe easier to read), followed by the total assessed value of their property (or properties):

Merck & Co., Inc. — $249,669,700
Carriage City Properties, LLC — $27,128,400
Park Terrace at Rahway, LLC — $6,684,500
Giacobbe Investments Corp. — $5,762,400
Alard Realty Enterprises — $5,477,900
Renaissance at Rahway, LLC — $5,362,800
Woodbridge Plaza, LLC — $4,329,500
Rahway Industrial Site — $4,296,900
Ninette Group — $3,659,600
New Jersey Bell — $3,576,279
TOTAL — $315,947,979

In some cases, like Merck and Giacobbe Investments Corp., the total figure includes multiple parcels, while for others, it’s just one property, like Renaissance, Park Terrace and Woodbridge Plaza.

“The city’s tax base has experienced, what we consider, limited, but stable, growth; it increased by just 2.1 percent since fiscal 2007 to $1.55 billion in fiscal 2010,” according to the S&P report. It considered the city’s per-capita market value of $134,775 “extremely strong.” Officials expect a tax base reduction for the subsequent year, according to the report. While the tax base is diverse with the 10 leading taxpayers accounting for 21.2 percent of assessed valuation (AV), Merck alone accounted for 17 percent of AV in fiscal 2010. Total assessed valuation is $1,486,291,000 in 2011, down 3.8 percent from $1,545,974,600 in 2010, according to the report.

Primarily due to a tax appeal by Merck (the first in more than 20 years) and to a lesser extent the economic downturn, the tax base will likely decline by 4 percent to $1.49 billion in fiscal 2011, according to the report. The city has settled the tax appeal and will repay about $1.6 million over the next three years.

There are a few more interesting (at least to me) statistics within the documents, as well as details of the bond sale, that I’ll post soon.

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ABC 7 News‘ Neighborhood Eats paid a visit to Rahway recently, checking out Patria Restaurant and Mixology Lounge on West Main Street. A 2:41 report on the new eatery aired Friday, featuring a tilapia dish.

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City Council, taxes

Almost $42k in property taxes canceled

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Almost $42,000 in property taxes have been canceled for 2011 in connection with redevelopment projects downtown and the Arts District.

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City Council, tax appeals, taxes

Merck tax appeal adds $66 to municipal tax bill

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A tax appeal settlement with the city’s largest taxpayer, Merck & Co., will cost the average taxpayer another $66 this year, on top of what was expected to be a $146 municipal tax hike for the average Rahway home. The City Council approved the settlement by a 6-0-1 vote during its meeting last week.

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City Council, tax appeals, taxes

Tax appeals doubled in 2010

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Refunds were approved for 52 tax appeals last year, twice as many as were filed and settled at the county Board of Taxation in the 2009 tax year.

The increase was not unexpected and primarily due to economic conditions, City Administrator and Redevelopment Director Peter Pelissier said. In 2010, 20 of the 52 properties that were appealed were purchased in late 2008 or 2009, and three of them were brought by the city to correct assessments, he said.
The average tax refund among the 52 tax appeals was almost $1,900 while the average reduction on the appeal was $36,500. The largest appeals were industrial or commercial properties, such as more than $5,000 for 1072 Randolph Ave. and more than $15,000 for 670 E. Lincoln Ave., which saw its overall assessment reduced by a third. All 52 tax appeals can be found in this Google spreadsheet.
It’s much the same everywhere. This Bloomberg report from December indicated tax appeals are way up all over (“Tax appeals swamping U.S. cities, towns as property prices plunge”). Specifically, New Jersey homeowners filed 18,147 appeals in 2009, up from 10,067 the previous year — an increase of 80 percent.

Closer to home, there’s this story from MyCentralJersey.com, Piscataway budgets $500G for tax appeals, as well as this one from the Cranford Chronicle, Citing tax appeals, Cranford officials say surplus is down to $58,000 from previous estimates of $1 million.

In November, the City Council approved a multi-year tax appeal settlement for 1510 Main St./90 E. Cherry St. (Block 318, Lot 12) that had been pending in Tax Court. (It was not among the 52 appeals in 2010).

The building, acquired by Pioneer Investment Corp. in Linden for $205,000 in February 2000, houses Skaff Pharmacy on the first floor and apartments on the second and third floors. It pays about $11,000 annually in property taxes. The assessment was dropped by $37,600 — from $202,600 to $165,000 — reducing property tax by $1,909 in 2008, $1,962 in 2009 and $2,054. The total $5,924 will be applied toward 2011 taxes, as per the Tax Court.
After more than an hour in closed session tonight, the City Council approved a tax appeal settlement with Merck that will affect the 2011 budget and tax bills. The settlement was approved by a 6-0-1 vote. We’ll have details later this week.

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City Council, taxes

City Council vote on budget Monday

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After holding a public hearing on the municipal budget last month, the City Council is expected to vote on the spending plan at its meeting on Monday at 7 p.m.

The 2011 budget, which runs through June, is $44.9 million, with approximately $31.1 million (up from $29.7 million last year) coming from property taxes. The governing body held a public hearing on the budget at its January meeting but tabled approval of the spending plan until the February meeting. The overall budget is up about 1.3 percent from last year while last year’s budget was up about 4.5 percent.

The average home, assessed at $133,000, paid roughly $2,280 in municipal taxes last year, and that total is expected to rise by about 6 percent, according to City Administrator and Redevelopment Director Peter Pelissier. A 6-percent increase would bump last year’s average municipal taxes paid by about $136, for a total of almost $2,416.

Municipal taxes generally make up about a quarter of the overall tax bill, with another quarter from county taxes and half from school taxes.

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In case you missed it, the Merck-Schering-Plough merger, announced almost two years ago, looks like it will mean some of Merck’s Rahway employees, as well as some in Summit and Union, will be moved to Kenilworth eventually. The firm plans to convert its Kenilworth campus into a research center focused on biologics, according to this Star-Ledger report last month. Some 580 manufacturing jobs will be lost while another 900 employees in marketing, HR and legal will move to the headquarters in Whitehouse Station.

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City Council, taxes

Hearing on 2011 municipal budget tonight

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City Council tonight will hold a public hearing on the 2011 municipal budget during its regular meeting tonight at 7 p.m.

The $44.9-million budget will raise approximately $31.1 million from property taxes. Officials tout that appropriations have increased only 1.3 percent over last year while being below the state-mandated caps, though the exact impact of the budget on the average assessed home is unclear.

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Sunday’s Star-Ledger had this story that examines Rahway’s redevelopment efforts over the years and the state of downtown. I’m not sure I would call the 50-unit St. Georges Avenue apartment complex that went up in flames this month a “symbolic achievement” as much as other downtown projects, like the 222-unit Carriage City Plaza or 159-unit Park Square (which didn’t even warrant a mention in the piece). What did everyone else think?

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