Revaluation

Slightly more than one-fourth of Medford homeowners - 26.8 percent - have been told that a recently completed revaluation of all township properties will result in increases in their tax assessments. Only that percentage - whose property values more than tripled - will see a tax increase, said Glen Seelhorst of Appraisal Surveys of Mount Laurel. Many of those are people who own property in the newer developments, such as Centennial, Braddocks Mill and Headwater, he said. "The majority of those in the 26 percent category who will pay more taxes are those who own undeveloped land," Seelhorst said.

The first revaluation of property in Camden in 31 years may have to take place this fall, City Council was told yesterday. City Business Administrator Patrick J. Keating told a Council caucus that he needed $200,000 to begin the process of implementing the revaluation, which most recently has been frozen for two years by the legislature because of the perceived hardship it would create for the impoverished city. The freeze ends in October, and although the state Senate has extended the grace period, the Assembly has not. While the lower house still might act, Keating said the time had come to prepare for the revaluation.

Lumberton Township officials say they will take seriously the complaints made by homeowners about property valuations conducted by a Mount Laurel firm. The township has paid Appraisal Surveys Inc. about $150,000 to conduct revaluations on the approximately 3,000 properties in the township. But residents have complained that the company has performed "slipshod" inspections of their properties or failed to even enter the homes in some cases. The survey, which increased the number of ratable properties 12 percent for a total value of about $400 million, will bring uniformity to the amount paid in property taxes by individual homeowners, according to Mike Brown, project manager for Appraisal Surveys.

Cherry Hill Mayor Susan Bass Levin announced yesterday that the township, which has been under court order to complete an unpopular property revaluation by October 1991, had arranged to push back the deadline one year. Superior Court Judge Marvin Rimm in December had ordered the revaluation and set the date. Many of the assessment firms contacted by the township said, however, that they could not revalue the township's 24,000 properties in a professional manner if forced to meet the October 1991 deadline.

Members of the Paulsboro Borough Council, who said last year that they would wage a court battle before complying with a county order to conduct a revaluation of taxable properties, have given up their struggle. The council is scheduled to hold a final vote Tuesday on an ordinance that would appropriate $73,900 for the revaluation, ordered by the Gloucester County Board of Taxation in February 1986. The ordinance was unanimously approved on a first reading Feb. 17 and is expected to pass easily Tuesday.

In Pemberton Township, the tax man cometh. A vote by the township committee tomorrow is expected to send a crew of tax assessors to each of the 14,406 parcels of land in the 65-square-mile township to begin revaluating properties. The committee is scheduled to vote on a resolution that would award a $380,000 contract to Appraisal Surveys Inc. of Mount Laurel to perform the revaluations. In March 1985, the township was ordered by the Burlington County Board of Taxation to revaluate all the properties in the township, said Sharon Austin, township tax assessor.

Property owners in Lumberton may soon see an undesired increase in the value of their homes, businesses and farms. Even churches and schools are not exempt from the county-ordered property revaluation scheduled to begin in June. "The whole town was getting out of sync," said county tax administrator Samuel Paglione. "The reason for a revaluation is to make sure the four classes of property - vacant land, residential, farmland and commercial, which includes industrial and apartments - are paying their fair share.

After being told last month that it must do a revaluation of all properties in the borough, the Medford Lakes Borough Council will decide tomorrow night whether the revaluation will be done by the borough's tax assessor or an outside firm. Douglas Kolton, the borough tax assessor, told the council at its Jan. 24 meeting that the Burlington County Board of Taxation would not agree to more postponements of a revaluation and would order Medford Lakes to do it this spring. "It's inevitable," said Mayor Michael Keating of the council's decision to accept Kolton's recommendation that the borough not seek another postponement.

The Deptford Township Council Thursday took the first step toward undertaking a revaluation of township real estate by instructing its engineer to update the township's tax maps. During a work session, township assessor Margaret A. Harper told council the tax maps had not been revised since 1946 and contained many inaccuracies. "In November, we submitted our tax maps to the state for review," Harper said. "In 20 of the 72 plates, there were 351 deviations from the state requirements.

The Winslow Township Council faces an expenditure of $400,000 to $450,000 to revaluate every property in the township, but the expense will not necessarily come this year. The one-time cost was discussed by the council at last night's municipal budget workshop. The last revaluation was 14 years ago, said N. Lee Tomasello, tax committee chairman. He said the township "has been very lucky to have gone this long without one. " But the Camden County Board of Assessors has mandated a revaluation by 1990 or 1991, Tomasello said.

The Cherry Hill school budget is projected to rise next year, but some residents will see their share of school taxes decrease due to the recent township-wide revaluation of properties, district officials said. The school board gave preliminary approval Tuesday to a $174 million budget for next year, up 1.6 percent over the current $171.3 million budget. Despite the increase, said Assistant Superintendent Jim Devereaux, a home assessed at $223,500 - the new township average - would pay $222 less in school taxes due to the revaluation, which shifted some of the tax burden to commercial properties.

Jeanne Caruso believes her house, at just over 1,000 square feet, is among the smaller in the Erlton section of Cherry Hill. She had questions when its assessed value jumped from $93,300 to $170,400 in the latest revaluation, which is estimated to raise her property taxes by more than $400. "It's a lot of taxes for a small house," Caruso said Thursday evening at Croft Farm, where residents were arriving in a steady stream for one-on-one meetings with representatives of the company that performed the revaluation.

Gordon and Donna Brown moved from New York to Camden County in 2006 looking for a place to raise their two children. They found it in a $643,000 house on a Lawnside cul-de-sac. Four years later, their River Run neighborhood and the adjacent Lions Gate are suffering, with houses languishing on the market or headed toward foreclosure. The recession has hit hard. But Gordon Brown says another pest is eating away at this once-prosperous section of town: property taxes. The new houses are assessed closer to market value than older ones, which means they bear a bigger tax burden.

Gloucester County officials estimate they could save taxpayers more than $1.5 million annually under their new county-run tax-assessment program, the first of its kind in the state. The pilot program will be phased in over a three-year period, beginning this month. The county assessor's office plans to conduct revaluations and assume other responsibilities that have been handled by assessors appointed in 24 municipalities. Mayors from five municipalities today will sign cooperative agreements allowing the county to provide the service.

In Center City, the $3 million home of the late novelist Pearl S. Buck was hit with a 28 percent tax hike. Henry S. McNeil Jr., heir to the Tylenol fortune, was told his taxes were going up 108 percent on his $11 million Rittenhouse Square mansion. On a somewhat humbler block, former City Councilman Angel Ortiz will see taxes go up 25 percent on his four-bedroom home in the Northern Liberties section. Ortiz, who says he'll appeal, wonders why he's on the list, focused mainly on million-dollar houses in some of the city's swankiest neighborhoods.

If New Jersey municipalities want a lesson in how not to conduct a property-tax revaluation, they need only look at the small, seething borough of Haddon Heights. Following a state mandate, the Camden County community attempted a reassessment for the first time in a decade. Residents knew that some of their tax bills would rise and some would fall. But the town and the firm hired to reassess properties didn't adequately explain the process or prepare residents for the shock coming in the mail.

Mention the word reassessment in polite company and you're likely to get a rude response. "No one is ever happy paying higher taxes," said Sandy Student, an Evesham Township resident and member of the Marlton school board. Even though reassessment does not necessarily mean higher property taxes, "when you reassess, you're going to spin it differently, and people don't like the uncertainty," Student said. A property's assessed value is used to determine its tax. It's almost always less than what the home would sell for on the open market.

Peter McCausland does not give up. Even as Airgas Inc., the Radnor-based company he founded in 1982, struggled in recent years and its shares slid from $26 in 1996 to less than $5 in 2000, McCausland's confidence in the company remained unshaken. "I think that over the last few years, when the stock price was very low and the dot-coms and the telecoms were getting all the attention and all the capital, people viewed me as sort of stubborn and single-minded," McCausland said.

Nearly 200,000 Philadelphians opened their mailboxes this month and received news from the city that all homeowners long to hear: The value of their homes had gone up. The downside is that as home values go up, so do property taxes. But that distasteful news hides some better news: Even while Philadelphia is fighting to halt population decline, demand in some parts of the city for homes is pushing up property values to extraordinary levels. And not just in Center City, the one area of Philadelphia that has shown strong population growth.