Tag Archives: tax appeals

City Council, tax appeals

Almost $1 million in PILOTs in 2012 budget

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The $49-million municipal budget anticipates almost $1 million of revenue from various PILOT (Payment In Lieu of Taxes) agreements, including the first from one of the Park Square properties.

The total $961,000 in PILOT revenue is up from the $783,000 in the 2011 budget and breaks down as follows:

* Lower Essex St – Denholz Management (Rahway Plaza Apartments) – $366,000
* Landmark – $150,000
* Parking Authority (River Place) — $170,000
* Rosegate — $25,000
* Senior citizen housing — $250,000

Landmark, which broke ground on the Irving Street side of Park Square (2 Park Square) in 2006, appealed its assessment in Tax Court, getting it reduced from $6.05 million to $4.077 million.
The Main Street side (1 Park Square) is assessed at $8.965 million.

The PILOT agreement had the developer paying taxes on the assessed value of the parcels as they previously existed. Landmark will begin paying 20 percent of its assessment this year, which will rise 20 percent each year until it reaches 100 percent (which would be 2016).

River Place was constructed on property owned by the Parking Authority, which receives an annual payment from the development’s owner and splits it roughly in half with the city.

The city budget also anticipates $660,000 in revenue from red light camera fines. About $1 million was realized in the Transitional Year budget, which covered the six months of July-December 2011.

The amount to be raised by taxes in the budget is $33.455 million. The proposed municipal tax rate for 2012 is 2.287 (per $100 of assessed value), so the average assessed home ($133,000) would see municipal taxes of $3,042, compared with $3,046 estimated last year. (Remember, municipal taxes make up only a portion of your overall property tax bill; the others being schools and county). Presented to City Council by the administration in February, the municipal budget will be up for a public hearing and vote at the March 12 meeting.

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City Council, tax appeals, taxes

Another look at Merck’s tax appeal settlement

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The city’s tax appeal settlement with Merck & Co. added approximately $400 to the average home over three years, according to my estimate. Merck & Co’s tax appeal settlement that was approved a year ago cut the property tax bill for the pharmaceutical giant by at least $4.5 million over three years, reducing its overall tax assessment in Rahway by $82 million, or more than 26 percent.

The appeal affected the tax years 2010-2012 and my estimate includes some assumptions based on 2011 tax rates for 2012. The biggest hit looks like 2011 (see the end of this post). My estimate doesn’t include some other costs the city might have incurred, such as appraisals, litigation and borrowing, only an attempt to quantify how much the new assessments affected the average home.

Overall, the city’s valuation dipped from $1.549 billion to $1.486 billion in 2011 and $1.467 billion in 2012 as a result of the settlement, according to the letter sent to residents last year, explaining the settlement.

As part of the settlement, Merck withdrew its appeal in 2009 and received a cash refund of overpayment of taxes that year of $1.6 million. All told, that’s at least $4.5 million, based on 2011 tax rates, that had to be made up somewhere on the tax rolls.
Some explanation of how I arrived at this estimate: The average home in Rahway is assessed at $133,000. Every $13.30 in municipal taxes on the average home generates about $149,000 in tax revenue. Feel free to check my work in this Excel file; the key figures also are listed below (tax rates can be found on the city’s website). For 2012, I used the 2011 tax rate since the county and schools have not set their tax rate, while the municipal tax rate has only just been proposed.

Merck’s overall assessment was reduced from $312,368,300 to:
– $280,878,500 for 2010 (-$31,489,800)
– $249,699,700 for 2011 (-$31,178,800)

– $230,000,000 for 2012 (-$19,699,700)

Merck’s property tax bill shrank approximately:
– $1,614,797 in 2010 [$144 for average home]
– $1,797,458 in 2011 [$161 for average home]
– $1,135,688 in 2012 [$101 for average home]

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City Council, tax appeals, taxes

More than 100 properties win tax appeals

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More than 100 properties successfully reduced their tax assessments for 2011, securing reductions in their property tax bills totaling $117,704.

The tax appeal amounts were approved by City Council at its November meeting, following property judgments by the county Board of Taxation. The 104 properties successfully reduced their collective tax assessments by more than $2 million, from $16.74 million to $14.7 million. Included among the reduced assessments were two dozen Riverwalk townhouses and two units at Carriage City Plaza. These judgments were appeals that reached the county level, and could be appealed to the state Tax Court.  In all, the city received about 200 individual property appeals this year, according to Tax Assessor Richard Kulman.

The number of appeal judgments approved are twice as many as the 52 settled at the county level in 2010, which were twice as many as 2009. The totals do not include the tax appeal settlement with Merck. The pharmaceutical giant had its assessments for 2010, 2011 and 2012 reduced as part of the settlement.
Averages among the 100+ properties, followed by high/low, were:

Original assessment: $162,551 — $82,800 / $305,700
New assessment: $142,729 — $61,200 / $250,000
Reduction: $19,822 — $2,100 / $47,900
Appeal amount: $1,143 — $121 / $3,211

Here’s a Google Docs spreadsheet with all the properties and details on the assessments and reductions. If that’s not cool enough, here’s a link to a Google Map of all 104 sites (which can also be found below). [It was pretty tedious and laborious to put together, so it’d be great if you could click the link to at least make me think it was worth the time and effort…].


There seem to be a couple of pockets or clusters around town. In addition to the new construction, some two dozen properties around the Rahway River Park neighborhood won tax judgments and another handful in the Inman Heights area.

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In case you missed last week’s drama between the City Council and Mayor Rick Proctor, Sunday’s Star-Ledger had an editorial about the ongoing debacle (“Rahway mayor’s overreach may cost him his job”). In addition to calling Proctor’s veto of an anti-nepotism ordinance “tone deaf,” the 258-word piece essentially said the council is trying to push Proctor out by reducing his salary.

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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, 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.

Continue reading Merck tax appeal adds $66 to municipal tax bill →

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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Carriage City Plaza, City Council, tax appeals, taxes

Tax appeal settlement approved

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City Council approved a tax appeal settlement Monday night with Carriage City Properties. Details on the settlement can be found in this earlier post.

Property taxes would be paid whether units are occupied or not, and the developer would be responsible for taxes on any units it owns, said City Administrator/Redevelopment Director Peter Pelissier.

During the Feb. 3 pre-meeting conference of City Council, Third Ward Councilman Jerry Scaturo raised the issue of Carriage City Properties leasing its unsold units. Sky View began marketing a lease-to-buy option, starting at $1,250 a month for one-bedroom units.

Pelissier said it’s not a concern from the standpoint of wanting to see people moving into the community. “It’s better than having…units sitting empty,” he said. If the units are occupied, the $10,000 fee owed to the Redevelopment Agency should be paid, said Pelissier, adding that the agency is seeking is a formal request from the developer to clarify the redevelopment agreement. Originally the developer, Elizabeth-based Silcon Group., was to pay the $10,000 fee upon closing of each unit.

About 57 units have closed at Sky View, according to the Parking Authority records, while the Redevelopment Agency has been paid for 46 units and 78 temporary certificates of occupancy (TCO) have been issued by the city, Pelissier said. It’s unclear how many units are rented, he said. The 16-story complex has more than 200 units in all.
By my count, about 48 units have sold (less than a quarter) at an average of almost $292,000, a high of $444,000 and a low of $216,350 (which happens to be the most recent sale I’m aware of).

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City Council, tax appeals, taxes

Settlement near on tax appeal

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Carriage City Plaza will pay almost $1 million annually in property taxes under a tax appeal settlement reached with the city.

The settlement, which is expected to gain City Council approval Monday night, calls for Carriage City to pay $350,000 in taxes for its partial assessment for 2008. In addition, it will pay $100,000 toward the approximately $350,000 that’s owed to the city as part of intersection improvements and signalization, among other things.

Starting with 2009, property taxes for the site will be about $978,000 at full assessment, City Administrator/Redevelopment Director Peter Pelissier after Tuesday night’s conference council meeting. The total assessment for the property is about $59 million, with $2 million for the retail space, $6 million for the hotel and the remainder for the 220 residential units. By comparison, Pelissier said, Merck & Co.’s property is assessed at about $277 million.

The reduced assessments primarily came in the residential components of the project, Pelissier said, adding that once the retail portions are fully developed, those parts will see increased assessments. The original assessment was about $60 million, which would have generated $1.2 million in property tax revenue.

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