County tax administrator says that property reassessment increases on North Boulevard ‘are supported by current sales’

LAKE COMO — In light of concerns raised by residents of North Boulevard regarding property assessment increases of up to 60%, thus heavily affecting their tax bills for this year, the borough council hosted county tax officials during the workshop discussion of the Lake Como council meeting Tuesday night.

Monmouth County Tax Administrator Matthew Clark announced to the packed municipal meeting room at the Sept. 3 council meeting that “your bill changed but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

“I understand, all we (taxpayers) care about is the bill, but all we (Board of Taxation) care about is, is the assessment correct?” he said. “How much is being raised? We have no control over that…The fact is, I believe that from the data we are provided, the larger than average increases are supported by current sales.”

Clark, along with Municipal Tax Assessor Mark Fitzpatrick, had been invited to attend the night’s meeting to further discuss the borough’s current involvement with the Monmouth County Tax Board Assessment Demonstration Program (ADP) amid the reported anomaly of the significant reassessment hikes. Also present at the meeting included County Tax Commissioners Renee Luttrell and Stephen Dnistrian.

“This is not about answering the issues about the tax bill, that’s a spending issue, and I have no control over that, no one in the assessment function has that control. It’s an issue of is the (annual reassessment) model correct — are the assessments correct?” Clark said.

“If the assessments are wrong, then they have to be fixed, they’ll be addressed,” he said. “If they’re not representative of current market value, then they will be fixed.”

Clark said that “the overarching goal (of the ADP) is to annually redistribute the levy,” however noted that “we need to separate the assessment function from the collection function, or the assessment function from the (tax) bill.”

“The assessment function, by law, directly from the constitution but empowered by statutory law, only has one purpose and that’s to create and maintain a mechanism for the distribution of the bill…if you’re worth five percent of the town, you pay five percent of the bill,” he said.

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