Middletown delays reval

From the Asbury Park Press:

Town misses deadline for revaluation

MIDDLETOWN — A revaluation of tax assessments for properties in Monmouth County’s largest municipality will have to wait until next year.

County officials are now probing why Middletown did not comply with an order from the county Tax Board to have the revaluation take effect in 2008, instead of 2009.

Middletown officials, who hired a special attorney late last year to evaluate whether the township could legally seek a postponement of the revaluation, in part because of fluctuating real estate prices, say the muni-cipality did not have enough information to submit a complete filing by a Jan. 10 deadline.

“I didn’t believe that the town could be finished in time,” Charles Heck, Middletown’s tax assessor, told the county board Wednesday. “That’s what possessed me to file a book on Jan. 10 the way that I did.”
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Middletown’s last reassessment was in 1991; its last revaluation was in 1982, county officials said.

Middletown Deputy Mayor Pamela Brightbill, who did not attend Wednesday’s meeting, said that with the current downturn in the real estate market, values set in October 2007 could have become outdated fairly quickly, leading to numerous tax appeals from taxpayers.

“Some of these neighborhoods have not had a sale in six months,” said Brightbill, who noted that she is satisfied with the delay. “We didn’t think it would be a fair time.”