council president Kanan here uh councilman K here councilman Desa here presid councilman Dino here councilman Dodie here councilman gri here administrator L here and attorney crini
here okay thanks Kelsey so for everyone that uh doesn't know or know the the mayor is not here he was in a car accident today um he's he's okay uh right Michael he's okay
um and it was a tractor trailer could have been a lot worse so he is okay so unfortunately he's not here tonight um so I'm I'm filling in um so keep them in your uh thoughts and prayers um I'm going to I'm going to start things with our presentation
tonight from Don um our tax assessor so don if you want to get up I guess if you want either either that lect turn or are we there's a mic there's no mic yeah whatever you want I mean can you hear me
yes no one's going to run through a a presentation on um the the current tax assessment I'm going to open it up to questions for Dawn and uh we'll take care of all that in the front end of the meeting it's not really a presentation but I'm going to go over just do some
frequently asked questions and then maybe your questions will be answered and then we'll do your actual questions um so a lot of the questions start from the beginning so a couple years ago the town did a townwide revaluation where
the town was reassessed after about 30 plus years of not having a rebell and the values changed dramatically because after 30 years the valys were set in 1986 so as you may have known your
values were the same as 1986 but for all those years your taxes probably didn't stay at 1986 taxes they probably went up probably every year from 1986 till now so the
assessment doesn't raise taxes per se it's whether the budget goes up or the budget goes down the assessment is how the pi which the budget is pi how it gets cut up and so my job is to try to determine the value of your house
because you're supposed to pay taxes on the value of your home to cut up how the pie gets cut up and the piie is the budget so how I try to determine what the value of your home is is by using comparable property and a comparable property means that if you live a cake
Cod I try to look for cake cods I try to look for the same square footage as your house or at least very close range I try to look at how many bathrooms how many bedrooms you have a basement um where you're located um and those those are things I
look for in a similar property also I'm looking in a very small well a one-year time frame I'm looking for last year from October 1 of 2023 to October of 2024 that's the sales I'm looking at to
determine this year's value so that's where I'm getting comparable sales from yes right now we are in a very big upswing in the market so values are rising they have been going up at least 10% a year since Co started they're not
tailing off yet I expect that they will but I don't know for right now I'm looking the window of the October 23 to October 24th I'm looking at the same window for everybody and yes the sales are up so the way the program works is I
value everybody based on that time frame try to find similar comps try to do this every you know everyone the same if the market goes down like right now the market goes down because these are the sales I'm going to be looking at for
next year your values would go down just like the market goes down your value goes down trying to keep everybody's value as close to 100% as possible the law says you're supposed to pay taxes on the value of your home I'm trying to
determine the value of your phone am I perfect no do I get everything right every single time probably not there's a process that you can do you can write to me first we'll talk about your assessment I'll show you the comps that
I'm using if you're unhappy you there's an appeal process I will give you all the information I'll help you through it um you will have to provide comps of your own that are different from mine to
show that your value isn't the value so that would be but we go through the process and that's how it works um I don't know did I hit all the big highlights is there other oh if your assessment went up which it probably did
because the market has been going up since two years ago when we did the full rebout whatever percentage it went up does not mean an equal percentage in tax dollars going up the reason for that is the whole whole entire Town's value as a
whole went up about 12% the Residential Properties went up more than 12% because not all property appreciates the same rate the residential Market is appreciating a lot more than the commercial Market Office Buildings
industrial buildings um retail everything goes up at a different rate so this year the residential Market exceeded the rate of
the commercial market so when I say the average was 12% it's an average some things went up more than 12% some things did not go up as high as 12% so it doesn't equate to an exact rate change
it doesn't the rate should be going down with a 12% increase but that's depends on the budget the budgets aren't done yet it's not just the municipal budget it's the school budget the county budget the state budget the state aid to the school all these budgets have to be in
before they know how it's actually going to affect your tax dollars that's why the bills don't come out until July because that's when the rides are gone so um Donan do you want to bring up anything I I just asked you before 15 20 minutes ago about if we were to stop
this next year or this year and then what was your response if we stop now we will be set at these um assessments so everybody will stop at the same time but in my opinion it's not a good idea because we're still at the height of the
market we're looking probably at a little bit of a toter so we'll be stuck in the the high assessments it's bad not so much that you'll have to pay more that's not the problem everyone
will be set at a artificial High rate but what the problem is is if if you stop and say we want to do three years down the road or five years down the road you have to do a whole entire townwide reval again like we did two years ago which is a lot more costly
than having the 20% inspections every year that we're doing now it if we stopped now and the market dropped off tomorrow I would not be allowed to change the change the values next year so everybody would be set high and that
would actually open up the town to a little bit of a liability because everyone would appeal and then you'd probably all win and then the town would have to get back money which is not good so if we lower the assessments when the assessments lower everybody is paying
the amount that you're supposed to pay thanks soone do you anybody else up here have any questions before I open it up I one Joe and I thought of was one myself how does it affect our County rate by our balloon being bigger do we pay more
to the county the county equalizes the assessment based on our our ratio so if our ratio is 100 then our assessment stays what it is if another Town's
assessment is lower if they have an 80% then their whatever their town aggate is so if it's worth if the AGG 10,000 he would divide the 80% so it would actually be 120 would be their number so the county equalizes the aggregate value
so that it it doesn't hurt you as far as those rates okay if the if the the town appreciated 12% M what was the commercial the commercial appreciated about
6% right but the commercial properties are a lot I I actually don't know off the top of my head the total value of the commercial but some of the commercial properties obviously are millions of dollars where you know the
houses are F 500,000 is a house some of the properties are 25 million 30 million are the commercial properties so no they did not go up 12% um the other thing
another frequently Asked question is my house wasn't in the inspection this year so how does that work so how that works is 20% of the houses get inspected when it gets inspected they're looking they
the inspectors are not appraisers they're not get doing the values they are checking the data they are updating the record for the data they are coming in it takes about 10 minutes they're saying you got three bedrooms you have
two bathrooms you have finished basement do you have an attic isn't finished do you have a garage do you have this do you have that they're they already have the record of what the house is and they are verifying and updating the data they are inspectors they are not I'm not
saying that in their they may they also may be appraisers or assessors somewhere but in the role here they are inspecting and doing data I am the one who's compiling the data and creating the
assessments they they are assess ments they're not appraisals I don't take each and every person's house one by one and do an appraisal like the mortgage would do I'm doing what's called Mass appraisal I do have a program
that I put in the parameters that I want I try to make it very close to what your house is it tells me the sales that are very close to your house based on the parameters that I take and that's how the value gets derived by when I'm trying to pick very close parameters to your
that's how I do it I don't do like a mortgage appraisal that's going to go in and fine-tune every single thing mine is more of um it's finding the houses and it's CL the the more the data is correct the
better results I get so the houses 20% get inspected 100% get evaluated and reevaluated every year the values change for everyone you can't just change some
people and not other people that would be unfair and it would be uneven and it wouldn't be um it would be unequitable for all the people involved for the to anything else for Don guys I've heard comments and I've got questions from
residents also that the taxes will never go down this number will never go down they might not but that's not up to me that's an up to your assessment it's up to the you guys want to Curry on the bus a little bit it's up to the budgets of the
the town if the town budget if they don't spend less the the taxes don't go down it doesn't matter what I assess you the taxes as a whole if the school spends less money and they cut their budget the taxes would go down if the
town spent less money and the county spent less money and the state gave more state aid well state aid comes from us in our pockets somewhere else but if you get the only way the taxes will ever truly go down is if you spend less money
just like in your own household budgets every every year thanks Bobby um okay don't I'm gonna open it up question for questions you want to stay there you want to sit here I everyone one of the things um sorry um
one of the other things I've heard and I've also noticed is like I'll use my neighbor as my example okay um asking for a friend yes he did not let the inspector in that he was concerned or whatever okay and so even though my lot we have the same exact Lots you know our land value is the same on it my house is
like um more but his taxes are still more than mine okay so what would he do in that type of scenario he could file an appeal um and I could do an inspection which if you file an appeal and you haven't been inspected then I
have to come and do an inspection to ify the data and then we make sure the data is correct and then we you know run the constancy you know why why it came the two houses came out differently would he
be entitled if he did would he be entitled to a correction and then a reimbursement if the tax is showed up say you want is appeal these are one of the questions if if if it showed that there was a reason that the value was wrong
based on the com of the new data then he would yes he would but it might be that there's something there that I didn't know about it it would raise so like letting the inspectors into your home is beneficial even though I think it's beneficial because then we
get the facts right on your home and it's if I'm comparing your house to somebody who has the facts wrong it you know something could be wrong there but it can only do you know based on the best data we can get the
best data is actually seeing the data thank you yeah good question what was the percentage last time people that came in the house just so everybody know inspections how many how many people what was it about I think this year we got about out of the 20% that we were doing I think we got in about 65% so
it's up from from the yeah from years ago when we did the um and that what was it two years ago I think it was closer to just 50 um which we would like to be higher but I think some people were still there a couple things people were still worried about Co situation people
are very still worried about people coming into their homes the the people that we have inspecting the town knows about them the we they have IDs they they can show you an ID that they work for the town um and we know who they are
and you can always you know call or whatever or schedule or have them come back or have them show your their ID they have middle sex ID have fake ID you don't know who you're letting in your house unless the count out of no just letting you know we
found out letters ahead of saying they would be in the area in the in the area that they were if you didn't get a letter they weren't in your area thank you Don all right so I'm going to open up to questions uh everybody that comes up you just have to state your name and um address okay um
hi I'm Brienne strer I live at 232 green Avenue um my question is about the how fair it was applied across the board I know I emailed you this there's houses a lot of houses on my street are very tiny Colonials which is my side of the of the
block and then there's a lot of brick Cap Cod a few of the houses like my neighbor has a renovating Cap Cod that is a full-blown Colonial home bed ceilings in they upstairs the whole thing they're our best friends we're in each other's homes all the time the houses would sell for pretty much the
exact same price they went on the market yet their house went up 3% in value and mine increased 38% in value so their house went up not even 10 gr and mine went up $165,000 I just don't see where that's
fair and apply equally also at the front of of my block where there's no flooding issues I live in the spot that gets hammered with flood and hurricanes at the top of the street the largest house on the street which is our houses are three bed two bath home this house
at the top of the block is a four bed two bath home the biggest house on the Block clearly and she's also a friend of mine and hers went up $100,000 out of 54,000 value my small house is valued at $609 right now I we're a young family my
mind is alone over this and I don't see how that's properly or evenly applied if the whole town went up 10 to 14% why did my girlfriend see a 3% grade increase in mine went up 40% and I did write back something to you and you wrote back a lot to me and I
need to investigate more this is like a process right no and I am going to investigate more um and I but I don't compare the assessments to assessments I'm not comparing your house to other people's assessments I'm comparing your
house to houses that have sold that are similar to yours so it could be that the one across the street I don't have good data on and that one didn't get compared to those you know it's maybe not the same type of
house might not be compared I'm not saying it's 100% all the time there's a range you know maybe your house should be more of the lower of the range of what I sent you or maybe we need to look through and find different costs I did I
did send you some stuff and I know that there you sent me back that not investigated yet yeah so that's myig that if the town went up to 14% shouldn't that have been more equally applied across the board not necessarily certain houses certain types
of houses appreciate more than other houses some houses went up even more because they they were completely gutted renovated and it's like a new house that was with my house not completely got to R very tiny addition back in 2021 my
house already went of 20 6% $2,000 years on my taxes the last in 2022 so now looking at taxes doubling but 2022 was a reset for everyone the ratio at that point was only a 24% ratio which meant
the values that were on the house were only it should have been four times that okay because it was 20 that value was a ratio of 24% but those values from two years ago were set in 1986 so from
1986 they basically were not changed they were only changed if you um you know added a room did a renovation or whatever it it was at that time when uh they did the reval because
it was like if your house was assessment was 100,000 that would mean that with a 24% ratio your house is worth about 400,000 okay so it's like a quarter M but what happened when they did the rout
the housing the residential went up 300% so meaning that 100 went up to say 300 the commercial properties in town went up 500% at the time of the rout so at that time the commercial
properties actually took a lot more of the burden of the tax the tax bill at the time but when I say that was just an average it doesn't mean that everybody that was 100 went to 300 some people houses were totally
different from when it was 1986 and they they went up more than the 300% but you can't compare what happened my two years you can't compare what happened two years ago in the Ral
because that was a reset for 1986 rightful what was right so that that that I understand so in the case of the neighbor's house that I'm talking about Ed lives in one of the brick C cods across the street that's more his house more or less St to thing that the corner lot that I'm talking about it's
doubl the size it has vaulted the upstairs it became a FAL and Colonial and that renovation was done maybe I don't know eight years before my house and my house was a porch got enclosed on the front I didn't blow out the
whole so this house is and for you and I I have to pick through the data that you gave me and see which data is data that is incorrect on those houses which data is maybe incorrect from your house or not that even that your data isn't
correct but maybe the comparisons are it doesn't make sense to me that I understand you're sending me the recent sales but for me to go from here to where that woman is standing to my neighbor's health the street and if say that three bed two bath nicely maintained homes their house has a newer kitchen than our house does that house
is $200,000 less than mine and I'm going to have taxes that are thousands of dollars more that that doesn't make any sense and again I don't know when that house was inspected I don't know what the data is on that house and I don't I don't know what I'm comparing that to without looking from this venue and
that's what when I look at the stuff that you sent me and analyze it that's what we'll discuss okay and so my other question is when I when you about comps you're talking about recent sales Y where I would want to see recent sales of literally our half of the block where we get hit with mive flooding not any
like right but if it didn't happen this year or last year it's not going to be relevant because two years ago the market was 20% lower and three years ago it was 30% lower and four years ago it was even less than that because until covid everything was kind of level until
Co happened and things went like this and they're still going like this I just I just feel like it seems like I have a lot of friends family people I know that not I Liv here my whole life I feel like every person I talk to it doesn't my parents live on the Parker side they went up 50 okay that that seems pretty
cool my mom like I went up 50 I I went up 165 she go oh okay I'm not that's good then I'm not saying anything with mine it's just all over the place it doesn't make sense lot it is a little all over the place and part of the reason is is because inspection
rate of inspection that great but this town doesn't swing that much from house to houses I feel like it's middle section it's not like we have multi-million dollar homes we're not Westfield we're not all over the place right but the new homes are selling for $750,000 and I'm not saying yours is a new home
that's I said the new they're they are new they're about they're about 2200 sare ft but they're new Colonials but they're selling for 750 but I'm not comp in an older home to these new houses but I'm saying that's the market we're in right now there was a sale for $1.5
million single family home house it is an exception that's why I'm not using it as a comp for anybody's house Joe just wait yeah yep I ra um I'm sorry but go
ahead yeah so I I just I feel like across the board I think I see for a lot of people and it just was not equally applied you know mine was the one that they came into this year but in 2022 they did come in and at that time all of the work that we did in the house was completed that point and so that should
my house has not changed when the point of the last inspection is but the market has changed so okay so my house the same exact house my neighbor's house hasn't changed mine goes up 38% and their goes up 3% that doesn't make sense so there I
know that there's you know nothing perfect but that's crazy to me that's it's not the 10 some people are being told to town went up 10 some people are hearing 14 if that's the case then why didn't everyone's house just go up that amount because if everybody just went up we wouldn't need to change the values
but we we just went through a reassessment in 2022 so we should all be at a place where okay now everybody's where they need to be so then why isn't it like last year we all went up 5% so then this year nobody we nobody went up last year I went up
no changes made assments didn't change did not change corre that's what I'm the assessments did not change year just reassess last year Joe hold wait wait till she's done yeah okay that was that that was my my
big thing is I just don't see how it was how they came came out with these numbers and I get that you know I get that the market goes up but if the market goes up X doesn't everybody just go up together no I doesn't that doesn't make sense for a house houses all within
a like a four like my cousin has a house on Harris Avenue four bedrooms three Bs foot level h two living rooms a 12,000 foot yard mine's a 4600 foot yard her T her evaluation was 592 mine
609 that I don't get that I don't understand that and we and the things that you sent me we can address okay and I would do it in person U I don't I don't mean to not do it but it's is relevant to specific to
your property and I I would come in and see Dawn Wednesday she's in and I'm not done communicating with you talking sorry um so so so Dawn is available by phone and email uh email is the quickest
and then she's also she has office hours on Wednesdays so you could schedule an appointment uh to sit with her to go over you know your specific property uh she'll go over the comp you can she could print stuff off it's always better in person uh right down the hall thank
you okay Joe okay good evening thanks for coming out here what you do um Joe name and uh address 117 Avenue District to um I as I said um we were just reassessed
2022 um guy came into the house didn't do nothing to the house a lot of people you know 1200t house 1, 1400t house what have you you're doing your comparables right M um so you go from like she said
450,000 to 580,000 in two years that's cuz the market is telling you hey you know your house is on Demand right now I don't know if you ever heard that thing about unrealized games okay so this is like that I if I
sell my house for what you're saying my assessment is right my problem with this whole thing is the system right why not tax me on the sale of my home I mean there was a time when I the Builder you go buy a house was like okay the new owner is going to pay the increase in
the taxes because it's going to be reassessed at the new rate now these these houses keep getting reassessed while we're still living in them M and um and you know we can't go to we can't go back to our bosses and say hey I need a 16% increase in my you know in my pay
because you know I have to pay more money in property tax where I live you my my tax like a lot of people triple since I've been here how long you been here 50 years okay and they only triple triple over 50 years I mean what else is
happen cars you know how much they go that's fine slowly SL you said that before too tax is still going up even though assessments never went up but the tax going because the expenditures of the
town and the multiple you use all that but that's my primary thing like this whole idea of when you get the card and you see the card it's 580,000 and you you know no one came up to you and said I'm going to give you 580,000 you're telling me that's what it's work
so you compared to a house it's sold somewhere else mhm but I I don't we have to come and talk to you talk to you about where you got that St okay okay um so that's the whole thing I mean what what I don't like about it is the
process having to pay upfront a higher property tax on something that hasn't happen to but it's the property tax rate is not going to be the same as it was this year so that comes down a little bit correct okay so it comes down a
little bit but then when we did the re the tax rate was 9.81 okay you didn't pay you're not paying taxes on 9.81 anymore because now the value went up there's a bigger bottom number to divide the budget by so it went down to
2.3 and next year and this year it should go down I don't I can't say to what because the budgets aren this could be like a a no increase what you're telling I don't know if you're at if you went up 12 if you went up 12% so the
multiple goes down value goes up we're back to where we are correct instead we have this uh Sticker Shop that we get in the mail Saturday that tells us our house is worth $40,000 more than it was right we're not to worry
about I'm not saying a lot of us are here because I understand I'm not saying don't worry I mean I live in a town that's be been annually reassess since 2002 in Somerset County they started annual reassessment over 35 years ago
the last time you got the Ral in 1986 that's the year that burn count started annual reassessment and they've been doing it ever since I the reass reass are needed High School I was out of high school I was
too question what what drives the reassessment okay tell yeah so what I'll tell you what drives the reassessment the state looks at normally three markers and then they order you to do a
reval which happened here happened in dellan happened in Elizabeth happened in a lot of other places um they look at the ratio that I spoke about before Tel's ratio was 24% that means means that the values
that were on the books were only averagely like average 24% of the actual value so if it was 100,000 on the books your house was worth about a 100 is what they said okay but that's doesn't the
ratio always doesn't equate exactly to every single house because houses appreciate appreciate a different times not just houses but the commercial properties we so they look at the ratio it was 24 the second thing they look at
is how long since the last G out typically if it's over 10 years they get a little worried it was like 36 36 3 then there's a third thing that's a very you know kind of a technical thing
it's called the coefficient of deviation what that means is when a house sells how far off is it from its assess M and if the coefficient is bigger it means that a lot of the houses are off that
24% it means a lot of the houses aren't selling at that 24% ratio that is placed on the town so when the coefficient gets over 15% that's the third marker that they look at for Middle sex time since
last one was 36 years ratio was 24 oh so the marker that they look at once it gets under 85% is when they start getting worried about the ratio so the ratios are 24 the standard is 85 or better and then the coefficient I actually don't remember exactly what the
coefficient was but it was over the 15% which is the marker that they look at that's what triggers an assess a reassessment the annual reassessment program which we started this year attempts to keep the
ratio at close to one 100% as possible every single year so you don't get into a situation when it's at 24 like the time of the reval where commercial was actually 500% more than it was worth
which is you know off that meant for like a lot of years perhaps they could have been carrying the burden more than the residents okay yeah yeah I mean we have to get down and talk about this right but um on state level on Town level in
my opinion I'm addressing this thing generally you know uh you know expensive of going up because they're building a lot of condos I don't enough single family home so the value of the homes are going up I we can talk about why that happened but um you know because
the zoning ordinance allow things to be done when they shouldn't be done and they are done when they aren't done um and um so here we are you know we have single family homes kid cods who has a colone who has a what and everyone wants to buy it okay but go back to unrealized
gain you know I really think that you know in this whole process of everyone trying to get the money they need to fill their budgets um you know everyone at home have to tighten up their own budget because we only to make what we make I think government itself needs to do a
little uh you know you we maybe we won't need to hire you say we need to hire people how about asking some people to stay a bit longer so we're not putting more people on pensions and having to hire new people to replacement that's been going on now
for what 30 40 years and that's and this is where we are it just keeps going government just keeps on getting bigger and bigger retirements keeps more and more and it comes to a point where the private sector like where we are care of don't worry about Trump is
taking care of about that we do need accounting or a everything you and this might be a great for a budget or a school budget or some other budget yeah Jo remember it's County the
school board goes into this um and the town and there's there's a library tax so there's really four unfortunately um some towns are paid for we have a pretty lean team here Hall has 10 people we're all volunteers up here there's no
Volunteer Fire Department volunteer fire department station and all that stuff but it's just it's a lot to to come out of a small two square mile town as it starts to blow up
you know that just driv you out I agree I agree Jo two years ago I got I got whacked on mine you know but um I mean the county isow it was 36 years so I you know I mean teachers teach English right they go to school and there's someone
needs to a tutor so we're paying for more tutors in your school so school cost goes up because we need to provide you know teachers to teach the uhre I just want to hit on one thing you said Yeah Joe unfortunately the the school we got a lot of questions about the school here I want to hit on one
thing you said Joe is that you said why don't you tax people at the sales price yeah so if someone bought their house in 20 years ago and they're getting taxed at that price and someone bought their house now that's going to be very
unequal and very unfair when the market levels out and it goes back down but if you only change it when someone sells what if they never sell and they've lived here since the 20 you have to pay 10 pay taxes on a $10,000 heal they paid in or 24,000 that they
paid in 1970 which is what my parents in their house here I just understand well the new buyer is going to be paying that new rate but what if there's no new buyer exactly then there shouldn't be a new tax until I sell it then you're not
paying on the value of your home you're paying on a value of 20 years ago well I mean the tax have still been going up at a certain percentage yes they absolutely that's why you're a assment you don't get more taxes by making the assessment higher well this is seem like a real
quick talk that's not how the taxes get done the town doesn't say gone we need more taxes so raise everybody's assment that's not how it works the budget gets done and it gets divided by the aggregate of the town so if the town
went up 12% the tax rate goes down because the budget is getting divided Now by a bigger number which makes a smaller tax rate that's what happens they don't they don't say we need 5% more money raise everybody 5% that's not it's not how it works and everybody
guess goes up 5% at the same time I'm sorry I don't want to take more want to talk good we can talk okay thanks Joe I know there's a lot of questions but I have one more recently asked question a lot of people ask me the question and
they say I don't have any kids in the school I never had any kids in the school why do I have to pay the whole tax here's why the gas station doesn't have any kids they pay the full tax the Amazon warehouse they don't have any kids they pay the full tax every
property any owner that owns a property pays all of the tax the school the county the state to everything that's how it works whether you have the kids in the system or not commercial properties your ratables are never ever going to have any kids in the school
they're still paying the School portion of the taxes yes and it helps everybody out that's the system in New Jersey if New Jersey wants to have a different system great but that's how the system works work that's why you pay the whole tax because even the commercial
properties pay the full tax well you get to change the percent no there's no percent change they pay the same rate as everybody else how come hold on guys hold on hold on uh I don't want you got people waiting in line Y I can't stand online okay so um right
after the gentleman yeah right before Joe yeah distinguish council members good evening on thank you all for your service uh we all live in the same Community this is our family that you see here we all have
concerns U there's uh one several issues that I have one is that we've divided the town into five zones 20% each I happen to be in that one zone the first Zone that's being reassessed right now everyone's reassessed you're inspected
okay so what happen happens to those people that are in Z CL because that mean that they're they get reassessed based on the data that was collected from the last time they were inspected five years from now well four years from now right or I'm being charged
now everyone's getting charged if you want to call it charged everyone is getting reassessed based on the data that we have if they didn't let someone in two years ago during the inspection and their data is incorrect we're yes we're words were going with wrong data
that's why every 20 that's a cycle of 20% every year trust me 20% every year to get new data is a lot better than waiting 35 exactly now I also understand that there's a thing that's called a property card and I may be using the
wrong term it's the last time they looked at your house and said you had the two-bedroom house one bathroom a finished basement adding correct how do I obtain a copy of my proper you ask me I'll you want if you do email you can email me I'll do it within a day if you
don't do email then give me your thing and I'll send it in the mail to you now should we find any discrepancies or should we feel that our taxes are not fair how do we go about correcta there is an appeal process and um I again if
you do email I can email you the information it comes from the middle sex County Tax Board okay that's who hand handles the appeals and what you do in an appeal is you fill out a onepage form but you do
need to do a little homework you need to have comparable sales which is what I talked about to show that your house is not like the comps that I give you it's like some other comps that you that you find and I look at them I look at your
house I look at them and first I look at them and I say hey you have something here I can settle with you or I can say I I don't agree with you then you would go to the tax board and you would tell your story to the commissioner they look
at your data not not the they're at the tax board they look at your data they look at your comps they look at my comps you tell about your house you tell why you think I'm wrong I say here's why I think I'm not wrong they make a decision
if you're still unhappy you can go to Tax Court and do the whole thing again if you have wrong data on your data card on your property record card I will fix your property record card a lot of times
it might not necessarily change your assessment very much because if it's the square footage is the square footage of your house you might have you might have had a three-bedroom house at one time and you changed one of those bedrooms into
beautiful closet big beautiful closet you know it's still the same square footage it's not for me to tell you what to put in your house it's might not change that much you might call it only two bedrooms but that house could
potentially still be the three bedrooms and it's still the same square footage quick two two two years ago they came through and they reassessed our house I forget the name of the company it yeah it was um something it doesn't matter irrelevant
whatever they produced a report and says Tim Stewart who lives in 345 Main Street lives in this house looks like this do you have that information from two years ago yes no cuz I called them and they too didn't have it no interes that you
wouldn't have that because they made an assessment of Housing and I would think that was probably some valuable information that probably so what happens is the record used to be on paper okay okay it's now done in a computer program which is all the data that I
keep okay once I Chang the data in there that becomes now your property record card whatever was in there two years ago if I changed it now isn't going to be there anymore because it's one record one card in the olden days when they kept it in paper I might there I might
have it in your file from 1986 but that's not going to be you know really relevant now it might might be exactly the same house but it's really not relevant now once the property record card gets changed then that's the property record
card you referenced the resource talking about houses being sold in our community is that Zillow what is no absolutely not it's not a bad resource but if you go on Zillow they will
probably care about are the actual feeds that sell at the town and you can there is a place you can look up on the middle sex County Tax Board you can look up all the information of houses that have sold any
house that have sold my records are come the Deeds come from the county I put the deed into my record of what the house sold and that's the records I'm using and I'm using my and I'm using my record what I would recommend is again um
sitting with Don because she has yes exactly I see the Wednesday no no no but I'm not trying to cut you but uh i' she's done this for other people so she can actually pull that info up on Wednesdays for you or I can pull it up any day of the week if you email me that and if you email her she could do it that's why I'm trying to save you some
trouble she could do it and pull it up for you and provide it for you and you don't have to go to the county and then the records I'm using are the ones that I have in my property record card Zillow the reason Zillow is good to get a general IDE
they're okay but you will notice that they will compare a condo to a single family house they will do a one floor condo and compare it to a you know a new they they'll do a brand new Colonial their
algorithm is very generalized I am when I do it I'm trying to pick out very specific attributes to the houses Zillow and those things they're doing more like oh oh yeah the house in Middle sock it's the same they're not all the same yeah
but aren't you just looking at the sold price only the sold prices yes but when Zillow Zillow absolutely you can find fing what zillow's great for Zillow is great for finding homes and looking at them see what they sold for and see what
they look like compared to your house that's what they're great for but the Z estimate that they do is not that right but they put an estimate of what the value of your house is they're telling you they do put an estimate of your value of your house two years ago I
did this with you and you threw all my Zillow out but I was using you said Zillow no good I worked for three days on Zillow Zillow is good for finding price not the estimated s right
no I I understand so you say the Zillow post erroneous sale prices sometimes yes but that's it's good for looking at houses that are have sold in the area sometimes I do throw out sales if
they're in a state sale to cut no if it's in a state sale closure things some sale the 1.5 million I threw that out just because of double any other s in all just all respect people here I know
I would have stood up second but I cannot stand understand said you can't person after this one that's okay again distinguished council members ta for going we thank you for your service here and uh and you
can write to me and I'll write back with him probably the day understand the process we find we find it it's discrepancy to come to you and we talk about if we in agreement uh if not then we would have to go to Bruns and then raise those conc yeah set up a meeting
to Wednesday for com hi' F at molar 311 M Street okay okay um first of my first question is um if we waited 36 years why did we wait for
an alltime high to then choose that as the time to pick the value okay so in two years ago actually it was more like I think four years ago the the the state ordered this town to do a reval it was it takes about from the time you're
ordered to the time you can actually do the reval usually takes about two years because before you can do a reval you have to update all of your maps and get the map certified by the state of New Jersey if you haven't done your maps in
also 35 years I don't know if they were they weren't I don't know the state of the map but it takes a little bit of time to get your map certified about eight months if it's in good shape could take longer once your map is certified then they allow you to go and put an RFP
out to get a company to do the rebout so then you have to put the timeout do all the flotats interview the the companies you get it then they start the rebbel that would be in a good time for Middle
sex that timing also lined up with Co it's not a really good time in 19 in 2020 to do a reval so they asked for an extension which they got they asked for another extension in 21 because there was a Resurgence of Co and people still
did not want to let people in their house so then they pushed it again to 22 which is when they started the inspections and the numbers went on for 23 we have now started annual reassessment and the reason the town decided to do that is because one not
because other towns do it but many many towns at this time are doing it after they do conduct a reval because you don't need to certify your maaps every year they're already certified you can
adjust the values as it happens Market goes up Great Value goes up markets go down values go down taxes are not done by the it's the budget if the budget goes up which it
goes up every year taxes go up if taxes were cut taxes would go down so the reassessment allows us to inspect 20% of the houses every year on a rotating basis which helps
keep the record a lot cleaner than when you wait 10 years 20 years 30 years it the records are much more up to date as far as annual reassessment goes like I said Somerset County has been
doing it for 30 years almost every town the towns that aren't doing their spies they're all doing revals for this year and the next few years they were all going to do annual recession after the rebound Den Allan also got ordered they were in the same exact position as you
guys their tax rate at the time was a l over 11% at the time of their reeval they also got ordered by the state they did it they're on annual reassessment they just completed their fifth year and the assess are over there too now we're going to start over in the first section
and we're going to do it again monov County all does annual reassessment every count in Mono County so so Bernette yeah the big question though was about man so we got I I saw letters we all saw letters that's okay 36 years we were mandated we got we got
a one or two year reprieve because of Co but 36 years none of us were here right um the the re Val were that was done two years ago cost the town over $400,000 how much by doing
it f i I found out Joe from the CFO it's roughly 30 to 35,000 a year so it's big difference we save a lot of money by doing it in small which is not which is not a bad thing to have a rout it's just the fact that we waited 36 years and we
waited for an alltime high to I agree we were mandated it was a crime what happened for 36 years exactly and then we were also told that grants and other state and County um programs were going to come in to offset this huge 36y
Year yes um not doing our homework I guess right so they were going to come in and they were going to help with the assessments that we didn't go from a $5,000 house to a $500,000 house who could afford to stay here but but the
tax rate changed at that point and that's what they said that was all going right so that we would now not feel this 50,000 to $500,000 difference I work in the mortgage department I work and morage business so I agree Zillow is not
an accurate it is a tool it is not an an accuracy program okay but we're also talking about we're sending people into people's houses who are not AR phasers we're saying just count some of them are okay and and the ones that I hire are
also have are assessors as well right so what I'm saying is if you're going to come into my house and you're going to evaluate my house I would prefer it they're not evaluating but they're not right so then what I do because I don't go out to your house either when I do your Mortage because I'm right so what I
do is I then put all your information into a an an AVM Matrix and it comes out with a a number now that number is usually lower than Zillow because of mortgage right so so now you're talking if you're going to assess my house I
want to know what a mortgage company is going to give me not what somebody might think it could possibly sell for right so there's a big difference between what me as a mortgage person is going to give you for your house versus the person who's going to say well if I want to come in and I want to buy your house I
might buy it for 500,000 or because of the fact that right now we're at an all-time high houses are at a premium I mean people are bidding more where they're like it doesn't matter that your house is worth 500,000 I'm going to give you a million and can I just stop like
from a mortgage view the house that's sold in town for 1.5 okay they probably could not get a Mor it's not going to come out correct so they're going to get as much as they can get based on the comp right and they're going to have to pay the rest in cash and then when you do a bidding war and you're bidding a
lot over the sales price your house is probably also not going to comp out and that's why when you say oh this is sold for this I am using not just one sale I'm using several I try to get at least five just like um like a an appraiser
right to determine the value because one sale isn't going to make the market but I'm saying not to use sales I think that's what other people were saying how you determine the value of the market it's called an ABM it's an evaluated Matrix where do they get that from there is a computer system where does that
data come from that goes into I can find out for you it's from the assessor of the town okay so why why are they selling for so much l okay mortgage less selling higher if if you're going to Value me value me at my lower don't value me at a higher I
think I think the mortgage I think the appraisers appraisal for the mortgages are coming in at these am I worked as a mortgage broker I'm not here to argue I'm just trying to I had my real I had my real estate license
when since I was 18 years old I did for 10 years I work for a mortgage company for six years I've done mortgages I live with a mortgage person does mortgage we talk about mortgage every day um and where do you work now though I work I'm the Somerset County Deputy tax
administrator I worked there for 13 years I'm the person if you live in Somerset County you come to to do an appeal I that's where my normal job my full-time job of 13 years I've been the assessor in Zen Allen for about six years and here for I guess about 3 years
years um I understand that and I we we actually don't will not use a mortgage appraisal I'll say bring your mortgage appraisal but they're also using the
house as collateral and often are a lot stricter let's say but they use but they are still doing it from cops and if you look at a real estate appraisal for a mortgage you can see what kind of
adjustments they're making and if they are trying to get the price they're like oh well I'm going to make the adjustment figure I try to not use very I use very limited adjustments not to say that their adjustments aren't warranted I try
to find houses that are very strict in comparison very similar square feet very similar amenities and like not big adjustments and when comps come back with really big adjustments that first
of all you're not even allowed to have a certain amount after a certain point yeah yeah but they're also making time on real estate ones they're making time adjustments they're making all kinds of adjustments and sometimes the adjustments are very big and that's I mean and I'm not saying that a mortgage
appraisal is wrong it's it's not wrong I'm not doing a mortgage appraisal on every single house and my last question I mean this is just my ignorance not KN the answer to this question is the Amazon building a middle sex building is that yes that's in Middle sex when so
when that property came and that's a huge business gigantic and the amount of uh traffic that has now encroached on the town with all those trucks how did that not all set us like immensely because we went from small business in town right we only had very very small businesses in town that's a gigantic
business how could that not have FV it it's a combination Bernard It's a combination one big thing that uh the mayor has talked about over the last coup meetings it comes up so the blue Acres so I don't know if it goes back 30 years or 35 years something like that
we've lost we just hit our 90th home that we've lost uh Ren Avenue the home on Ren Avenue is now purchased by the state so if you average 90 Homes at 10,000 a year that's 900,000 every
year godone so the Amazon almost kind of plugged a hole and we had we had one also on Mountain Avenue the warehouse back where absolute was M uh much smaller in size but uh that plugged the other
hole so now we're kind of getting back to where we were if we don't have any more homes and I think we have one or two more on Second Street no so the blue Acres think about that 900,000 a year every year I just don't want to see
everybody leave the town I love the town so that's all I want to say but I do love the town I just think it's a shame I think for to be taxed out of it well listen we're we're we're we're we're doing our best we my question I heard before the meeting even started was well if we stop this you know and I was
serious or if we delay this and her first thing was well if the market goes down in a year or two what happens then and then and then everybody's well then everybody's screwed even worse because your assessment's locked in she's right I can tell you what happened look at
Manville okay Manville did a reval after many years on the height well in the height I think it was around 2011 then they had the flood that flooded not all the town but a lot of it to to the degree that one part of the
town is now called A Lost Valley they lost 80 homes to Blue Acres which are not on the rolls anymore that's 80 homes gone off the rolls everybody else in town is not pay the tax but in
2012 the values in 2012 the values were still set at the high price and now they're flooded out there's no more there wasn't an annual reassessment there at the time I can tell you because this is where I work and what I do 400 people which is
about fifth of the Town appealed and won because their assessments were here and their houses were now worth here the money was $400,000 they had to pay back out of the municipal budget to the people and it
when you pay back an appeal it only comes out of the municipal portion of the budget the school doesn't take any money out and pay back the county doesn't take money and pay back the library comes out of the municipal budget so they had to get ATT attacked onto their Municipal budget the next
year came they didn't do any annual recess they didn't do anything and another 20% of the Town appeal because they're like hey those people were really successful and I'm still up here now they're down here and that's what happens if you if you leave it at the
the High Point Market okay thank you very much you're welcome thank you yes hi guys my name is Tyler Pang I'm at 409 melros Avenue um mostly uh say you know like my place went up in 22
to 23 at 43% my taxes the actual money I paid the taxes it went up 4% like the the value that you get on this card is not going to affect the value of the tax that you are paying um what will affect it is
when the teachers finally get their new contract as that's going to hit us harder than this most likely um my question is quick guys really more um and Ione around um I was going to email you here uh suly
Clooney and Company LLC are they collecting tax information on behalf of you or have no idea about perfect so scam p man forgot it you're welcome I just got a quick question 37
DAV um I'm look that the treasure there there's one condo they're all identical condos okay why did one go down in your tax and every other one went up what's the actual
assessment well 266,000 and okay and the other ones the other ones well what do you say the the ones that don't have a basement are less than the ones that have a basement okay that Mak sense she would let nobody in
the house okay so I don't know if she has a finish basement or not so this station doesn't have okay her assessment today is 2665 everybody else is 2876 and they're all of them square foot
some and some don't but those went up okay so one my point is she didn't even put if she didn't have a basement right why you see less than anybody else I don't know but we can find out if she has the basement and I can look into it you're identical every's identical and we we can look into it and if
something's wrong on her on hers next year she'll go up more percentage than you she get away with this year maybe which W Wednesday night yeah was that I was going to say w Wednesday night you know
a jean hello and I from have a couple questions but I want to correct on something first okay houses on on R my father built them in 1965 okay all right he wanted to put Apartments put
parking underneath and the town wouldn't let okay so you're not getting tax money from that land is you guys for we were you got just anyway I have a couple of questions
so I think you answered U you answered one but I didn't quite understand all was talking I only answered one question well I got and I think I'm gonna probably you probably going to want to look look into
it proba come in and makeo and go over with you but I do have um I have several uh uh T duplexes in town okay and um they probably went up a lot didn't they uh yeah yeah but you why it doesn't
matter I I always pass the pass the increase to the uh duplexes are very hot what duplexes are very hot I know I know but my question is I have two of them okay and different assessments what
the uh after well the assessment is different yes but the amount that I'm being buil for taxes is within $100 of the two okay one went up $355,000 more than the other okay and I was just kind of curious on
that okay that's something you probably have to look you know office one went up 35,000 more more than the other one okay yet I'm being taxed pretty much the same from last year's tax you don't know what the tax is for this
year yet oh oh it says right here no that's what you got buil last year for 2024 that's what you got bu last year right that's I got bu last what I was buil last year right they're almost is within $100 they're almost the same huh yeah they're almost the same for last
year they're almost the same they might almost be the same this year but we don't know yet because the tax rate doesn't come out until July yeah but the right but the but the TA the assessment went up 35,000 I guess maybe understand okay
so and somebody else was asking that question and the taxes may still be very close to each other because oh so I have to wait till uh if it's your August if your duplexes are worth in the
600,000 right um let's see here uh well now they are right cuz that's what they sell for now 35 by the way I would s them to and then you collect the registration
feed on yourself no well we don't but the 35,000 in assessment on a $600,000 building isn't going to equate to a big a really big difference in the
taxes I I kind of so they're still going to be roughly yes they went up different amount there different locations different ones but they're probably roughly going to be around the same taxes again so you're saying to find out what the bills yeah
we don't well we don't know what the rate is right we don't know what the rate is until it's all right um then the other question I have is um so um I have one building that's um
ass set for um 67 all right and I got a letter that somebody's willing to buy it for 516 okay now I own a building in bar okay all right and I know it's a
different town but um okay the one that they they offer me the 300 or the 56,000 I'm paying like $113,000 for taxes a year okay all right
the one in Barnet I got I got an offer I got an offer means nothing for for 330 means nothing to me the tax dollars I don't control I understand it and it's a different town different whole different system whole different government and I don't control the taxes well then you
may I don't control the taxes in this why don't we cut corn here why why why don't we look why why doesn't every Department get a 20% cut so that people who are paying taxes to get little a little break I'm sorry is it too nice
here huh is it too nice here already is it too nice yeah I don't know barn might not listen barn might not do your garbage yeah Jean yeah it's Apple darn they might not have as many kids in school they might not have garbage for free they might not
have a school club they might not have I don't a Library I don't know what barnan has and here has so I don't know what they're paying for paying 4,000 over there right but they don't on a house that they offer me over 300,000 yeah Jan the schools and all
that stuff remember look at your tax bill you'll see it's I think mine 58 or 59% schools another 24 for the county um and then I think we're Another We're 22 or 24 somewhere in there but you know you just got to look at that that
breakdown but again barnegate what's Ocean County no schools yeah no schools ocean yeah school but but not the kids that we have here I mean it's just yeah it's apples and oranges I I know what you're saying I do you know what I'm saying yeah yeah all right so I'm good thank you Jean
thank you oh boy ready Pati days uh go on um earlier you said tax base with 2025 went up 12% that
collectively for the whole time yes okay so I was just wondering about that sheet out there mayor says on his sheet that went up 14% the residential home on just the class two residential homes go 14% on
average okay so that might be where that's coming from yeah would you when you mix in when you mix in everything it was 12 overall okay and you were saying I believe you said earlier commercial went up 6% I I think roughly yeah um
there's 20% that were just inspected yeah um how many properties were in that 20 1,000 1,000 how many did you gain interest it was about 65% 65% okay so that's better
than the 50 on the yeah well is there anything being done about the 35% that didn't let the inspectors in we talked about you guys talked about it when you you were here in September okay so this year I would have liked to have a longer inection time but because it was the
first year and trying to get it all together it happened in the late end of the year I think we didn't start until o mid October this year we're going to start a little earlier giv a lot more time a lot more options for inspectors to get in and I hope to get a better
inspection rate okay well you just said you hope to get a better inspection rate you don't I mean I'm not I I can't go door to door and hold a gun to someone's head and say Let Me In but a lot of other towns if people will not let them in the assessors will say okay if your
home if they think the home is at 500,000 we say we'll make it 520 to give them an incentive to let the inspector give us an after the county there are there are some towns where the inspectors will add things to the assessment if they don't get in they typically will put a base a finished
basem and a bathroom in your house whether you have a basement or not that way the assessment will be artificially High which will cause you to do an appeal which if you do an appeal then you have to have an inspection or you you can't win right without it but that
cost the town a lot more money to do that I don't believe that that is a good way to get get information I don't think it's a good way if the town it costs the town money to do that because if the
appeal if the house is artificially high and you win an appeal that's money that we have to pay back and like I said before then it comes out of the municipal budget it cost us money okay it's not a good way to compel people is it good to have 35% of the homes out there you don't know what they have in
the house I have what whatever from before and if they're assessment yes maybe some people are getting away with something okay if there assessment seems high they will appeal if they think theirs is
wrong okay if they sell the house when you sell the house and the listings on the MLS I look at every single one of them I look at the kitchens I look at the bathrooms I look at every it's like an inspection for me I look at every single house that sells and there's been
a lot of them in the last few years and I look at that data and I look at it and I compare it to my data every single sale it happens I try every day to Quality Control our records so they are as up to date as
possible do people get away with finishing their basement or doing whatever yes they do and it's even harder now because you can gut a kitchen and put everything back in the same place and have a brand new kitchen legally without permits it's really hard
sometimes to get the data but when they sell I that's why I look at every single listing that happens and I can only do the best of my data and that's why if you do every year there's a good chance they'll catch in the net eventually if you if you wait 10 years
or 30 years you're definitely not really I don't I don't I'm trying to catch I'm not trying to catch any I'm just trying to keep the data fair right well if you're striving for fairness yeah I see something unfair 35% of the people not
letting inspectors in and even if it's 10% over you know it especially you have so many people here talking tonight about them being over assessed you have 35% of people who and I'm sure it's not the whole 35% piece of it is being under
assessed so I just think some my opinion you know you say there are other assessors in other towns that will say okay let's bump them up a little bit to give them the incentive to let us in so we can get accurate I think that's a good policy and I think you guys should
pursue that okay my other question is um I know there's a lot of State um tax appeals um I don't know what the pro what the progress is on those how many are active right now well after the reval about 20
commercial properties filed and they have not been set some have been settled but they have filed again so that's about 40 out of 500 excuse me out of 5,000 line items there's about 40 now but 40 really
represents 20 properties 20 times to right right um so none of those have been adjudicated none of those have been some have okay from from the original rebal some I have done some and some are not a lot of them are starting to come up
now um I haven't really given up much I so meaning my what I try to do is get them to drop those years and I'll adjust them for the following so it it doesn't it's not a payback out of the the budget
okay but over over a period of year so you're losing rate but not losing there the same assessment they were until it gets until it gets adjudicated and that doesn't mean they're going to go down right they could right the T could they
hav and if they drop those two those two years for something next year it's much better off for for the town okay well how much have we from these tax cases in the last year 18
months how much have we lost in RS so far maybe $200,000 okay less than a house okay thank you very much hey Rich hey Rich D 525 gr stre so we've been in communication so uh I guess I probably
shouldn't feel too big cuz our assessment only went up a 100,000 maybe I'm in minority compared to my um I'm in the 35% uh they sent me a card I contacted them within a week I
contacted them again no response from this inspection company how do we get them to come in do an inspection I I think so there there was a little thing on the card that was a little bit wrong and those emails were not going to the
right place and when I found out about it I changed it immediately but there were a few houses with it some people then contacted me personally and then I scheduled them some people did not get them can you do that can you do that
five years before if it doesn't have to be five years but you can also look at your property record card and see if the data is correct or not um so one of the things you had sent us was about basement how does the basement factor into a house assessment I'm not looking
for detail Financial if if it has a basement it gets a factor of like small 10,000 excuse me 15,000 if it's finished it gets another 10,000 that's the adjustment that I make for it okay so it has nothing to do with the size of the house whether it's
finished or not 500,000 some basement some basements are you know maxed out D great things okay but it's not living space not CH is living space um if it's under the ground
and there aren't actual esses that is not count as living space even if it's finished correct if you have a bedroom down there and you don't have an egress that's illegal like people can't sleep there illegally right cuz we have a crawl space I mean that and what we were
comparing to was with basement right you know and I know I know some basement are really great if you have a bathroom down there you're going to be assessed for a bathroom that counts if you have a kitchen down there you're going to get a sser a second kitchen but it's not but
you're not going to get more like if you have bedrooms down there they don't count they're if you sell the house you can't Market it they're not legal bedrooms okay so I don't so when I compare when I compare the houses I
really try to be very you know the same houses in your neighborhood as P because a lot of them is sold um for for good prices for good prices but for basement there's not there's not a big adjustment okay and
also pools you so you could have the most beautiful inground pool backyard going it's only adding about 15 to 20,000 because some people look at that and say no way never big detraction some people are like this is great so even on
real you know someone the real estate appraisals you don't get a lot for those things but it does add a lot of value to the sale if if you're selling it could be $100,000 difference but it's like you but a lot of people might not look at
the house because the house pool so your Market your buyers aren't are more limited okay Rich anything else so so I guess the last question is yeah if I understood the last response it looks like even though my property assessment went up my taxes
shouldn't change because everybody went up that's it's thex your your taxes will probably change but they're not going to change the same percentage as your assessment changed because everybody went up also as we went before for many
years the substance never changed and the taxes went up every year because it's not I I don't you don't get gain revenue by increasing people's assessments what what tax bill does this assessment apply
to 2025 what the first 2025 tax all right so that's when we're going to know what right because quarters one July July quarters one and two are always um estimated estimated based off
the last year's stuff numbers three and four is when you justify it up with this year's tax rate Okay so if we want to do appeal we have to do an appeal we not the taxes correct cor Rec yeah and that would be up until when on is it April or May May 1 that's yes because I would
also set rich I would set up time with her too rich because when you appeal you're not appealing your taxes you are appealing your assessment okay thanks andless it's a re I think it's there's a more than it might say
May 1 after that in an assessment or r or something like that thank you Michael hi uh you said that uh basically it went up 12 the aggregate what do we do with the
aggregate aggregate what do we do with that we multiply it by something we take the budget and we divide by that number and that gives you the tax rate so when the bottom number is bigger the tax rate will get smaller two years two years ago I
appealed the uh I I was a nice person I let the company yeah they made one major mistake think they said I have a bathroom and a half when I only have a bathroom Okay okay
so I have a piece of paper that came from you I believe that said that uh for 2023 your house is ex uh the assessment on my house was
$370,000 after the appeal okay I just did a little C ation um you raised my assessment by $89,500
which is 24% of what it was so why are you saying well when up 12 but I'm sorry my name is I live on the whole town as a whole went up an average of 12 but to get an
average some people went up more and some people went up less because I went through the the trouble of right but it was two years ago what did the rebound two years ago realiz I moved here in 1984 and how been assess once right and
how much was it in 1984 when you bought it I don't even remember 20,000 maybe I don't remember would you take that for your house now for 37 years it's been 88,000 correct because there was no no
maintenance being done so when you would you take 88,000 now the assessment that it was for 35 years you take 88,000 I'll probably write ridiculous it is yeah but also I don't think anybody's going to
pay 49,500 for the house so better put me to email you make his email oh so if you use email it's really great because then
I can email email you back um information you could send him the comone too absolutely so she'll yeah she'll send you the count the county com com like they're difficult but then but once we but once
I do that and you can look at it and then we have something to talk about I would come in and see your about Wednesdays yeah but whole and she does appointments too so you can get so I lose on the percentage and everybody else got hit by 12 I get hit
by everyone else wasn't 12 most of the residential houses are are are higher right are higher and the the rate from two years ago a lot of people went up about 20% because that's what's really the rat's been in the last two years
you well I went from 88 to 3 right because the ratio was only 24 500% right because from the reval from the year when they had the reval numbers of 88,000 to the next year the whole
residential went up about 300% about 300% because the ratio was only 24 so your your assessment only represented 20 4% of the actual value no I think divide 370 by
88 three four five it's close to 500% right but it was an average and not all people got went up the same amount that's why waiting for so long some parts of town some
types of houses some parts of the segment of the properties go up at different rates that's why it's not good to wait 35 years to do I live in a 1750 Square living I have one
bed um I have an unfinished basement unfinished attic and I have three bedrooms a dining room living room and kitchen that's all I have as you remember when I was
comps the only comps I can find one are the little uh Branch houses like on first and second stre which sell for I don't know what they sell now two years ago they were selling for I saw
some for like 108,000 I don't think last year when we were doing this it was 2021 22 right the appeal would have been in 2023 because that's when the reval
numbers went on you gave me the appeal for 2023 so you gave it to me in 2022 okay okay well it was for the value of 2023 the inspections were in 2022 the values were in
2023 so I I dat you in 2023 all right well I'll put it in the field and I'll try to get you good counts but there aren't too many coloni one right but when if one if one house
has one bathroom and one house has two bathrooms but they're exactly the same otherwise you make a dollar adjustment you say Well they're exactly the same know yeah me as a homeowner you got to
give me three CS I don't know that but she can you can she can get the I'm looking for three bedrooms one bed a house plus I live on B road which is no good for children really
yeah so that would be a little bit less than a house of the same house in a neighborhood that's not on Main Street Stateway thank [Music] you uh Jonathan be res Walnut Street I
just have three questions um and maybe this is part partially answered already are the comps that you're doing for Middle sex do you look at middle sex burough middle sex county middle Tech bur only middl Tech bur only and if you don't come up with
like he said if only three comps are available for that specification do you then search for a wider area only in Middle Tex count middle sex burrow I would what I would do is I would then I let's say I would look for three bedrooms one bathroom and then I
exhausted my search let's just say I would go to a three bedroom two bath and make an adjustment for the bathrooms or but I would still try to stay the square foot same style I was try to say cape cods with cape cods cape cods are a different Market than a colonial so cap
cods with cap cods stay to try to stay the three bedrooms definitely try to stay the same square footage where I run into trouble there's some houses are called like a bungalow but it's I think it's sort of a judgment call what's a bungalow versus a rant versus a Cap Cod
so sometimes I don't have enough comps so I would narrow it down to the same square footage same bedrooms bathrooms the best I the past few years there's lots of sales it's not hard time to get Toms there's a pretty wide range of them
available okay because I'm in the new $600,000 club okay after a 20% bump this year yeah um and a cursory glance that coms for both the burough and The Wider County and I'm talking either whether
it's Edison mouin on the Terrace or Cranberry or Cranford um like not looking there okay I understand even in the Buro how many $600,000 plus home sales have there been a lot lot a lot on
three bedroomroom houses a lot okay um so this my second question is at the top of the meeting we talked about how a lot of us could have an informal meeting with you prior to uh filing an
official appeal um does an in doesn't does that conversation with with the assess um can that possibly affect the assess rate for 2025 or we talking about future years at that point if you file an
appeal I said before you file an appeal because you ad change it you can't change it now without it's on the book I need an official way to change it which is an appeal okay that would affect 2025 okay it affects the year that it
happen is there a situation where the conversations that I have with you someone else has you could affect the 2026 tax rate without having to go through the appeal process like maybe you make an adjustment to the property card that was erroneous or something like that yeah if if let's just say you
come to me and say like I don't even have a house like it got knocked down and you didn't realize then in that sense I could file an appeal and correct it that way because that is that would be
clearly uh not you know that's like the house wasn't there anymore that's not a judgment call like it's not there anymore right um if it's if you're assessment is with if it's within the comps that I and then you bring me some
other comps I'll put your comps on my grid and we'll see where they come out if and then we'll we'll talk about it if there's a big error in something in your house then there's maybe there's something we you do about it but in most cases you'll
have to file the appeal and I can settle with you you don't have to it's not that you always have to go and plead your case with the Commissioners I can I can settle I settle a lot of them but um you know and there's times when I was like
you know maybe maybe you have a good appeal like but you have to I maybe I'll settle with you but you still have to file the appeal to begin with okay to set it in motion all right uh my last question is uh do you have a distribution of the
property value increases um for like how many are below like 10% versus how many are above 10 Z not in my head right now no um is that data that can be made available can be publish and you know
something like that so that the people that feel that's un inequitable may get a better picture maybe M 21% but maybe like another maybe half the town 21% and I'm really not it the thing is is that
it's really it's based on the comp and there has been about 15 people written to me since the cards came out and I sent uh a comp grid tip in every case their
comps were their assessment was within the range of those problems okay without looking into anything further that's how they've come out there may be other there's people that I have to continue maybe doing some more research and maybe
we will unearth some things that will reduce their assessments but the initial ones that I've done the range is there and that's where the numbers come from that's that's where the assessments come from all
right thank you thank you anyy 109 know I'm going to open up the can of worms I'm not going to talk about assess um I understand that's a real important issue I agree with everything
going up but I'm really concerned about our taxes and as you stated the taxes are not based on the assessment and so um if I'm correct with my figures some people here might be able to help me but 54% of your tax dollars go to the
schools right and um I've been attending many many board meetings being um leaning on dep ears no answers from them but I don't know how many of you have looked at their school budget and where they're spending money
I've asked at many many many many meetings we as the public are on a tyght budget so you cut back you don't have as many cups of coffee from starbu you know grab some dinner is often so I've asked them to please look at where they're spending the money
and every time I go back and look at a bill list that's not happening so our voices need to get to them so that they make their budget lower I'm assuming that the council hearing all the people are going to try
their best to bring theirs lower but we need people to go and voice your opinion because that's where the majority of your tax so thank you thank you thank you mark your calendar April 24th at 6:00 is
their budget hearing meeting so that would be the time that we could go and voice your pment April 24th 6 o' you have to go in door one to the library thank you la uh any other questions for the tax
assessor yeah got my house um on Dat when the oh yeah you're gonna have to go and name and address yeah did you speak to Jack mic St before we had our
houseone they came they told us that our house with three bedrooms to b m well we don't have that it's two bedroom and I correct the record or two years ago when you told me about it right but what happened I was ping all the taxes back then you told me there was nothing I
could do but now you're saying like it thingss were people differ they would get something back but you can't get anything back from any previous years you it's on the the homeowner's responsibility to
appeal your assessment if your assessment is incorrect but we didn't know that that's what it was until and said he where's your third bedroom where's your second bed I'm like what are you talking about go through my house there's nothing right and if your assessment never
changes ever it's a lot harder to tell what if it's right or not if your assessment isn't 100% it's represents 24% it's a lot harder to tell if your house is right if your assessment's right or not
what was your assessment before the Rev I 80,000 okay was your house worth 80,000 back two years ago no it was worth you know 300 400 definitely not that much I live in a crappy house okay I'm
estimating I'm estimating what I'm saying is it wasn't worth the 80,000 that the assessment was and you wouldn't know that because it was not it was made in 1986 so now you can look at the assessment you can be like yeah it's worth that yeah it's not worth that let
me look let me look at some houses that are selling what are they selling for and you can do that your assessment yes when they came in for your inspection during the reval two years ago they corrected your record to to two
veds that's what it was valued at then at the time of the rebal it's what it's valued at now I sent you comps on two bedroom houses on your same square footage well kind of some of them where the Y the property was a lot bigger than
mine and like said and you're like even said that the other houses were average M was just fair yes I pretty much living a though I get it but I don't think that some of that you sent me we're not compared okay I understand that and if
you do an appeal you can come in with your comps and we can see where they and I'll put them on the grid too and we'll see how they compare but it's very hard to get a hold of you I you had said now I understand like the email was wrong to you because I sent on that email but my
email has been there the whole time I looked back at my record and I didn't have an email from you until 2022 that said if you for an inspection great so that's I sending but I also left you three or four messages and I never got and again I looked through my log of
calls and I didn't I didn't see and I I did apologize and I'm sorry and I don't know why that is but I did look back through my email email because you said you sent many messages I I didn't know that that was email I get that but said but I didn't talk to you through email
in 2022 because when I looked back I looked and I'm like yeah there it is there's the emails are exchange back and forth several times and I said wow I'm really sorry I missed because I don't see that and that's and I did I did apologize and once I knew I have been
communicating back and forth with you as quickly as I can I'm I'm not I'm I'm standing here I'm not trying to hide from people I'm communicating as much as best I can my name is Christopher Meers I a 607
Mountain teris uh I have really one question when you do these assessments are you take into consideration houses in flood plan yeah okay uh coms that you sent many
some of them were in the flood plane and two of them weren't and three were two houses on my street were not because they W during the sales period um last year okay and spoke and then we and we spoke about
it um that's my own concern is you know if you're in a flood plan there's several areas in MX flood plan absolutely it's a big hit when you live there because you got you had to pay the insurance and that's right you take that into account Y and busy roads
too most of the um like I say the comps that I got I there was one but that was the only one ATT was on yours was there one from Drake on there or near there maybe there was another
the third there was whatever the third one was was also right on the the brook but not that side of it it was on the other that's my biggest issue so that's thank you on so when I do the actual assessments my program
that I use for that does take adjustments on busy roads flood planes things when I send the grid that I like you write to me and I something wrong and I sended the grd those adjustments aren't on there but I look at I don't
make the actual dollar adjustment but I look at it and say so these two houses are the same this one in the flood plane and that one's not it's sold for higher you should be probably a little less I look at that and it's say yeah it is a little less I don't I'm not making a lot
of adjustments on what I send you I'm not making a whole lot of them it's easier to understand if there aren't a lot of big adjustments but yes if everyone is if your house on a busy road and all every comp isn't you should be
you know less than than those uh Loris seberg 534 Howard app I have a question about transparency of information and what's available to homeowners and residents is does the city have any plans or are there items AV available
now where we can see our property cards without having to contact you or we can see the that you're using without then are there any plans oh you can look at any sale you want through there's a a database look up you look on see whatever sales are I do not give out information other than the property
record card on a property when someone opers it your property record card just has it does have the picture of the front of the house if it's in the record which it usually is um and it gives you know the three you know says three
bedrooms two bathrooms this is all square footage year built um that kind of data I don't even think it has your name on it um that's it that's what someone gets if they inquire they can't get the other picture other pictures
that I might have they can't get any any other things how come like because you want be sending your other pictures or other data to anybody no like as a like as a property owner say I have an
account you come in and look at what I have and I'll show you but the property record card that I'm going to send out is going to be the data that everyone else is going to get you can come and I'll show you on the computer computer if I have other pictures or whatever it is but really the data that's the
property record card that's the data that's being used and that's anything that anybody else is going to get yeah I understand you will give it to me if I contact you yes as a person who's at work how do I
know that you are a homeowner when you email me and you say send me this data how do I know that's you I don't that's what I'm saying so I'm not sending out information to what actually most people do Oprah now because of
that what I'm saying is is could the town develop or have something where the residents register as who they are and we all have logins like every other site and then we can access the information that you would provide to us without us
having to contact probably not at info probably not it's because a lot of the data in you cannot get access to a database there there's a lot of data in
there that you just can't give out to everybody and D that Oprah would be the only option yeah but it's still only going to give just a card yeah as a courtesy I would show you on the screen
anything else that yeah I would have but I'll never I'll never get to you I like I don't work in the town and I I don't well I work here but only to 7 o' at night but but there's not going to be a
lot of other stuff other than what is on the property records card I mean I don't but you can email her too I can email the property record card but the thing is it's the only really the thing what's protecting getting protected is if there's any other pictures other than
say that the front which is going to be ex like you know people are just see the front of the house okay and and and that is like that because most people want it that way and
if you want Wednesdays like at seven my rule 6:30 or 7 you can you can make an appointment she'll you know Wednesday night I mean she'll she'll be here if you get out at 7 it's not my rule people try to buy those data and they they can't buy it either it's not it's like
I'm not not over like I said I'm not saying to make it available to everybody I'm saying what you're going to give us anyone available to the homeowner of thatf well thank you I have question not for this I think it's much more important
than this on that uh almost yeah almost Tim you referenc o over the web no no open public record yeah a lot of what happens like if someone nowadays when someone is
going to sell a house or list a house almost always the realtor will Oprah what's on the property record card because you know they want to check it they want to use it or whatever I mean you can you can write to me anytime you want and get
it is there uh anything else for Dawn anything assessment related re-evaluation related any questions at all I have yeah no no relate unrelated yeah so we're going to open up so the reason why I'm doing that is because uh
I'm going to take a five minute recess um Dawn's going to leave that's why I want to make sure all the questions are answered um and then five minute quick recess and then we're going to come back clear the room and then get back into the rest of the agenda we'll have a public portion for everything else unrelated to
her go ahead oh you got a name name and address Charlie Al so the assessment number uh takes care of the budget is based on
Bas the property assessment is for the budget of the town no the money that the town needs to run the town is the budget that budget along with all the other budgets School library County State
whatever get that's divided by what the values of the town is so all the Assessments in town all the houses what what are they worth you divide the budget by the assessments that creates the tax rate then the tax rate gets applied to
your assessment and that's what your taxes are so that's your piece of the P doesn't affect your assessment is your piece of the pie it doesn't have anything to do with the budget I unless SP and then
eventually yes yes thank you're welcome uh anybody else for do okay thank you all right uh five minute recess and then we'll finish the rest of the meeting thank you d
d job I know yeah you did got home and now I know great uh we have three tonight ordinance number 2142 d25 an ordinance vacating a portion of Grove Avenue in the burough of middle sex that hearing will be on March 25th that's the second
meeting in March not the first meeting I want to point that out um okay I need a motion for introduction motion and a second second okay um roll call for this Chris I think yes yes roll call counc
President Conan yes councilman K yes councilman Desa yes councilman Dino yes councilman doie yes councilman G yes okay so the public hearing will be on um 325 March 25th number two ordinance
21432 an ordinance amending the code of the burough middle sex County of middle sex New Jersey chapter 62 the municipal Alliance committee on alcoholism and drug abuse that will be on March the 11th um can I have a motion motion and
the second second okay uh Kelsey please take the RO council president Conan yes councilman card yes councilman Desa yes councilman Cino yes councilman doie yes Councilman Greg yes okay uh number three
we have we have four total ordinance 20 uh 21 44-25 and ordinance amending chapters 4207 and 42059 of the municipal code regarding contractor storage yards uh that will also be on March 11th and is there a
motion motion okay a second okay Kelsey please take the rooll council president conahan yes councilman car yes councilman Des yes Council Dino yes councilman do yes councilman GCE yes okay uh the last one ordinance 21 45-25
and ordinance amending chapter 19 cultural and arts committee the municipal code of the burough of middle sex to include the responsibilities of the beautification committee that will also be on March 11th can I have a motion motion and a second second okay
uh roll call council president Khan yes councilman K yes councilman Desa yes councilman Dino yes councilman doie yes councilman GCE yes okay um thank you moving on to ordinance for public hearing and a final adoption tonight is
ordinance number 2141 d25 an ordinance amending article four structures damaged or destroyed by fire or chapter of chapter 317 Property Maintenance of the municipal code of the burre of middle sex to adopt the provisions of
njac 5 23- 2.32 unsafe structures uh can I have a motion motion a second second okay so the Public Public four is open anybody that has any comments on this ordinance uh please
come up to the to the microphone just for this ordinance okay seeing none hearing none I'll close the public portion for this ordinance um and I need a motion to adopt motion and
a second second okay and did you motion to close I close okay sorry uh motion to close the public portion close and a second second okay um now we need a motion to adopt motion okay second Ken
okay Council please take the role council president Conan yes councilman K yes councilman defensa yes councilman Dino yes councilman doie yes councilman GCE yes okay ordinance passes uh moving on to adoption of minutes approval of
the February 11th 20125 regular and executive meeting minutes can I have a motion motion and a second okay all in favor I okay motion passes uh the mayor's not here moving on to council reports
okay um a couple of things I'm going to really fly through this um some some a report from the finance department from our CFO they worked with the Auditors uh for the 2024 annual financial statement that report
was submitted to the state of New Jersey last week um she is meeting with the financial adviser and bond Council to discuss the plan and timetable late April early May to convert some of our short-term uh bans into long term General bonds since 2025 is the final
payment on the police department the police department construction this will allow us to streamline other outstanding debt without increasing debt payments in 2026 and Beyond um our CFO attended a shared services webinar highlighting a
program through the Department of Community Affairs called local assistance Bureau it offers free consultations and studies to towns to assess opportunities for shared services or other overhauls to operations great opportunity to have them evaluate fire
department for Fire District option uh or get feedback on EMS possibilities um I talked about this last week njde we filed for $75,000 grant for Victor Crow Park uh the environmental commission worked on and submitted a grant for $20,000 for the
environmental resource inventory we should find out May um and then the mayor and I are meeting this Friday with the business administrator and the CFO for the very first time to get a preliminary look the first draft of this
year's uh proposed Municipal budget uh that's the first draft step two will be meeting with the finance Council mic committee to share these uh the findings from Friday uh the parks committee will host four public meetings to gather public input for creating the Victor crowd Park
master plan the first meeting is going to be Tuesday April 1st in the Library community room uh that's going to be with the engineering forb uh Suburban that we chose I'm not sure the time yet that's still going to be determined the second public it's Pro between 600 and 7 P.M
the second public meeting will be Tuesday May the 6th both are the first Tuesdays of the month and that's going to be on site at Victor crra Park Annex Building that's the building we purchased at the front of the park the exact time for that is still to be determined but probably between 6:00 and
7:00 p.m. Recreation is hosting its annual Bunny Hop it's a long tradition in Middle sex uh that'll be Saturday March 29th from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon difference than other years it's going to be at the rec center and not at Mountain View Park um activities include Easter bunny
photo ops pettings with actually a petting zoo games crafts and an egg hunt um I want to thank Carmen modika for her years of service I want to also thank Alex uh I know he's here somewhere Augustine for his years of service at DPW
um and I've added tonight an emergency services volunteer fee waiver as a workshop topic Depending on time we may push that to the next meeting I think a fee waver and I want to introduce it and get consensus from the council would help all of our all volunteer active
members specifically Fire Fire Department fire police OEM and rescue squad with some of the burrow only fees like permits not State not County just burrow only fees this could help with recruiting new members which we
drastically need for emergency services and then remember that Saturday May 3rd is our second annual volunteer Fair it's at the Library community room so we have some time for that moving on Council mccorn uh thank you sir um I just went to my first Board of Education meeting I
tended more of a parent than a person uh than a um believe but as Le I see that they are in their contracts with Thea which is always a a um interesting conversation to have when you're dealing with those so good luck to them good luck to our teachers good luck to
everybody um that you think of us when you are doing that and uh for our disabled and Senior Services I have not gotten any updates so everything is going well they taking care of those that um genre of our community for the film committee again we are still
working on getting everything aesthetically ready for um companies that are interested in filming within our community and attempting to get some rable space off of that and as you can see um as everybody else uh for a basic of an ordinance as you see one of our
ordinances that we are talking about has to do with the culture and arts committee and accepting in and that is another beautiful aspect of like how you can get involved and have your voice heard like if you want to see something us do something this would be a perfect
time to come and talk to add to it um and the final that is it yes thank you that's it okay thanks councilman uh councilman Jo Joe Des Senza yeah I attended the uh League of municipalities budgeting for new Council persons last
Saturday that was a good event I learned a lot about the budgeting process and uh we had a another Pool meeting and just to announce that the pool registration pool membership for the coming year will start next week uh we have not raised or
they have not raised the rates same rates as last year so we're hoping to uh have everybody come back and uh fill the roles all I have okay thank you Joe councilman dinino okay for Jay love uh
meeting tomorrow night 26 7 P.M it's the live uh community room um also there's one order of business there your next meeting for that would be March 12 also for environmental Mike mentioned the 20,000 yeah Grant okay
they also uh the Green Team submitted first round of the sustainable Jersey C certification and like Mike said $2,000 PS Grant and there also a $2,000 Grant 20,000 will be used for a more comprehensive ER and uh 2,000 for a
green team startup also a sustainable Jersey PSG partnership program will'll do an energy audit portfolio and we'll focus on bur Hall the library police Rescue Squad Rec Center DW garage Beachwood firehouse and
R Co Park anex so that's the good thing and for DPW I was talking to Chris and may today the one bus stop on R if you notice when you ride your bikes or walk there you can't get through kind of Y there Chris has been in talk uh talks
with them and they're thinking about putting it on the other side of Ren so it'll be coming from Bound Brook it'll be before the stop the traffic so that hopefully that's good also if people are trying to contact DPW their phones are down they got some emails that their
phones aren't working there um Telly's been involved hopefully by this week they should be up so anyone wants to get a hold of tpw can email there and let me will pick up there and uh you know DPW they're just
preparing now for spring events and doing pothole repair so they're on the Move okay that's all thank you uh councilman doie yeah the police report tonight it's short and sweet uh calls for service last month in January was
285 for adult arrest 372 summonses 35 or radar and 34 motor vehicle crashes uh let see I got [Applause] anything
um the detective Bureau is investigating 10 um thefts uh they did U Firearms permitting 39 of those and fingerprinting 37 it was a nice quick month I will have the other two
reports the next meeting just they didn't get to me that's all I have thank you Council that's it okay all right councilman Gregs yeah U regarding the shade treat they had the first meeting recently for the year uh
you know they they just basically went through and found which trees they wanted to to go out and look at and U and it's just starting to get swing so not much to report there uh their meetings are the third no sorry the second Thursday of the month at 7.m here
in this room um then uh the Board of Health um they meet the third uh Thursday of the month in the uh in the library meeting room uh and it was the first month that we were pretty much
handled by Somers County uh reports are like a thousand times better than we were getting before from middle sex County so that was good they had a lot of information and and uh just you know much much better than before regarding
zoning uh Tyler gave me some updates recently they had 14 summons uh 11 notices of violation seven Z seven zoning permits were applied for and uh rental registration so far in 2025 were for 12 properties
totaling 17 units that's a l okay thanks councilman uh administrator what pleas thank you good evening everyone the um Army Corps of Engineers has reported to us that the opening of South Lincoln Avenue will take place in late March so
fingers crossed on that and we've been waiting a long time but it looks promising that it will be in March our work is continuing on the 2025 Municipal budget the Chief Financial Officer and I have reviewed the entire preliminary budget we've already highlighted areas
where we think we're going to be recommending Cuts next we're going to sit down with each department head to go over the submitted section of the municipal budget that they the section that they submitted for their departments and then will of course be interfacing with the leadership as the acting mayor mentioned earlier um
progress is being made on contract negotiation as we continue to meet with representatives of the police benevolent Association the Department of Public workers the Department of Public Work workers Union and the white collar workers union so we hope that keep progress on that being made uh last
Tuesday as also mentioned by the active mayor uh we had a good meeting to set up a schedule of preliminary work sessions for the public on the master plan for Victor Crow Park and um we'll be doing a lot of Outreach to the community a lot
of publicity so uh be looking for that we really want maximum participation in this process uh reminder that the joint board will be discussing the restoration of r75 single family residential Zone designation for the property at 1190
Mountain Avenue which is the former Presbyterian Church a lot one in Block 219 um that'll be at the boards March 12th meeting uh resolutions this evening include the appointment of Kelsey mner Deputy register Deputy Board of Health
secretary affected March 1 of this year a resolution to accept the resignation of Carmen of the clerk's office affected February 28th 2025 acceptance of the resignation of Alex Augustin from the Department of Public Works effective February 21st
2025 for the approval of change order number one to decrease the total amount of the 2023 New Jersey Department of Transportation state aid grant project for RoR Lane and Princeton drive that's the decrease is in the amount of $3,262
Cent tonight's agenda Workshop will include a discussion of an emergency services volunteer fee waiver as well as a recommended ordinance by the environmental commission regarding invasive plans and in executive session
Personnel matters regarding the zoning and code enforcement officer as well as the electrical subcode official will be discussed we'll also be discussing contract negotiations with the rest of the slly my thank you Michael okay privilege of the
four that's that's you yeah oh hold on hold on on uh motion open the four motion second okay in favor all in favor all right name Mr Myers 67
ter what's happening is uh new person b a home moved in this is last year some time and they proceeded to put at least 500 tons of fill in their
backyard in a flood plane most definitely a wetland area the whole area behind there is all Wetland and so you can't do anything here I told the town I came over to the U Sony official pilot
and spoke to him look I don't want to make a big deal about this but just have to take care of this you know uh I looked at 35 years iach Spaceball 20 years here I love this town but this has is a real problem yep the dirt is not documented they had no representation of
testing anywhere in the town no permits were made they just dumped it now they raised their level their backyard four ft they had tandem um dump trucks 23 tons a piece three times an hour for two days going up and down street and now
suddenly a couple months later we have a gas s now one may not have any with the other but this third and I that take I hope it is not but if it's toxic we could destroy the whole water table yep in
Middle 6 County and Su County because screen book's right on the other side and it was not tested or if it was why first of all it shouldn't be there you can't do that you have a federal clood protection act you have
the flood Hazard and Control Act you can't do anything to raise or lower the level of a flood plane and if it is weapon I'm pretty sure it is it's a total disaster now I told them about this immediately and it's been I told the
mayor he said these things take time well 6 months wait too much time because that the the F needs to be tested immediately and removed and then test it again yeah because if the water table is bad we got bigger problems of
budget than this uh can you stay can I I I just want to get your phone and email I mean I have I have a neighbor who took video of the trucks coming in out yep it destroyed the driveway destroyed it so I
can imagine what the road is like it's not made to carry 66,000 pounds you know 48 times in a day right right and that's the least can you uh stay until we we take a a recess after this it'll be quick and then can I get your
information phone email everything yeah okay thank you because this is to me this is totally agree yeah that's ridiculous and a sidebar the same house did complete reconstruction inside knew
everything not permit one and you know uh there's houses next to them if the thing burns down from poor electricity work yeah yeah that's a real problem and we're talking about funding it's got to be 20,000 in perment fees there easy and
I let them uh Tyler aware of it he contact the construction department and 6 months I said what this this week what happened oh I have to check why isn't it done I know guys are parttime that's Rob CL yeah go out there and check it out he
was there he said the gentleman said it was way uh the people before did it no you know I've been 35 and I told L you know so okay thank you thank you so so hang tight yeah you could stay here you can
come back I mean okay okay anybody else for uh public comment just your name and uh and address William G 508 Grand Street good evening council members
several of us are here tonight because on February 7 Jennifer Panic went missing she was unfortunately found the next dayce and aart less than two blocks from her from her house by her family so actions speak louder than words while the police
department was sending out requests for information to help search for J they were instead restricting the search set resources better trained in these situations were not brought in volunteers were turned away or sent in the wrong direction
in fact more time and effort appears to have been spent searching for the alligator than for our friend who was suffering a mental health crisis a picture is worth a thousand words coffee with a copet the next morning and appear to be more important than Al allocating resources to help
search for Jen while it was scheduled far in advance events happen life happens and adjustments could have been made to postpone or scale back the police pres the world doesn't stop for just one person but why can't middle sex is a relatively small town
and my wife and I moved here from a town six times the size of this if people who care about Jen were willing to drop everything the search why were they turned away why were they prevented from going to places she was known to visit and ultimately finally discovered it and
where were the people who took an oath to protect and serve we support the women and men of PBA 181 they are out working to protect the residents of this burough day in day out and have responded to many different calls but they can only act within the confin of
policies and procedures from leadership for All Good Deeds they do unfortunately is the mistakes that have a lasting effect the police do respond daily to accidents protect the schools have been proactive in making intersection safer and respond to
Medical emergencies not that these things can be denied but when a woman needed their help they failed what if this was and fill in the blanks for any of these terms your mother your daughter your wife your sister your
friend your coworker your teacher were the actions taken over the 24 hours which you would have want it done how would you feel if you saw officers and elected officials smiling away in a warm building drinking coffee while your significant out other was out
missing on a cold winter night stop and put yourself in someone else's shoes so what actions can be done by you and there's three that we're asking for and they're simple and one's going to be a gut punch but I've been in your shoes tonight we're asking for you to make a
motion right now right here inviting the middle F County prosecutor's office in to review the actions and policies and procedures of the police department we're asking for the installation of cameras in the Parks to be added for security and the establishment of a
voluntary registration of residential cameras with the police department to allow for quicker response times that police could notify instead of having to r on the first item as I said I'm sure has a shock to you but I've been in your exact seat and know the initial shock
and gut punch when the same request was made of me over five years ago six years ago looking back it was one of the best decisions that I made for my community and it helped uh reinforce there were many good officers with in the
department but overshadowed by a few changes were made leaders came forward and the community great greatly benefited inviting the prosecutor's office is your only action you as elected officials can take it is a win-win for the people you took an not
to serve if the department is working smoothly and properly then you can be proud you can proudly say you have the best department around and what happened was an unfortunate circumstance but if the opposite is found you are being proactive As Leaders of your community to try and prevent this tragedy from
happening again unfortunately we can't bring back our friend but how you act now can help give knowledge to help treat mental health and she can also make sure that this does not happen again thoughts and prayers are words not
actions actions speak louers the words be leaders in act toight we ask that you make this motion and bring in the prosecutor thank you thank you anybody else for a public comment Sanders 10 minutes Avenue um I
know you guys are working on the burrow tax I mean the the burough funding and then the 58% of that in the school I went to the school board meeting now they have a meeting supposedly a meeting
of the mind but there is no communication you can ask a question you can make a statement you have your three minutes now mind you they wer good about letting people talk and actually I got up there but the point is that there's
no communication back and forth there's no um they do answer some questions but they don't answer everything so I know on the board side there's not much you can do on that other than get people elected to get things moving I
understand and but what I what I wanted to say to you is I asked them about shared services I was told they can't do share Services other than maybe grounds grounds Keepers to keep the price down um I I asked them what's their benchmarking and I got stairs so the
point is Middle sex burough ranks 196 out of 426 high schools which I think is actually pretty good we should be touting that there should be some measure of um performance on their website nothing you have to go to the state to find the numbers and I'm
working on looking through those numbers of their budget and things like that um the other thing I asked them directly and again I got blank stairs I said to Sharon who was part of the board who was
here he had a community meeting yeah we had a list of questions for the board and for the superintendent of schools I said when are we going to get answers to those questions she did forward she said it she's not supposed to speak she did say that she told the superintendent of
schools there were questions that they have but they have not answered so they selectively choose what they want to do we need to find a way to get them to do what they're supposed to do and I mean if you're going to have a meeting of mind that Wednesday and Tuesday before
the meeting make it a meeting in the minds just make it a conversation and I know that's what I'm going to present to them next time you guys need to have a conversation and then you could write your questions out on whatever Facebook whatever you want but I know you guys
are aware of this I just don't know what we can do yeah I don't I don't I know it's come up a lot Bruce over the last year I know uh I know Jerry you've been going to the meetings he brought it up to me uh just about this it called the meeting before the meeting meeting of
the minds is that what it's called Committee of the whole comme of the whole Committee of the whole which I had never heard of I'm not sure it just didn't even sound legal but supposedly it is um and uh I have not made it to that even yet though I've only that's I
have not made it to a okay um and then as far as the Board of Ed you know we're I mean Chris can chime in here but there's you know it comes up a lot for says you know but um I I think if there's a budget issue or something that we can get involved there's there's
that's the only real reason other than uh the dayto day everything flows through the superintendent and you don't have that Authority so we don't even have that you don't have the authority on 58% if they dis if they don't pass the budget doesn't come to the burrow year I
believe that's that thing years and years ago that was true going back perhaps 15 years uh but I believe that statute change during the chrisy administration yeah I'm and Joe seems to it hasn't come up in years and okay I'm I seem to recall yeah I seem to recall
perhaps 20 2011 so not yet not just yesterday 2012 so our only recourse is to get people in there to get them to make moves that they need to I'm not saying they're doing everything wrong I don't know that yet but what I am saying is the lack of
communication I can come here and I can talk to you guys and you guys feed me back that's great and we just saw that in an action but they are afraid that they're going to say something to get sued that's where I think it's coming from that they're or it gets Ry and it can can get
very emotional in there what I can tell but the point is we need to get them to start talking us because we pay a sh yeah yeah all right I just wanted to see I know you guys are aware but yeah yeah aware Bruce but I yeah aside from that I
think it's uh I think just you know the right people have to be on the board of ed and make some Chang it's just it's not an easy process okay thank you thank you Bruce anybody else from the public um what do we do
for this panic and the scenario how do we go apart like coming to make sure because I mean I know our pach for solid and hopefully this isn't just unfortunate thing but I mean do I make a motion do we do that now Chris or you uh take it under advisement talk to the chief take the advisement take it to the
chief yeah okay what do we do what did you say Chris you take it under advisement and you talk to the chief after that then talk to the yeah maybe um and then Michael you
can help with that too absolutely sure I'll update on what happen please yeah thank you I think and and I think even even coordinating a meeting would be [Music] helpful sounds like maybe there's not been Communications on both sides so you
were told not to not to search there were there were people told go away we have confirmation from other sources outside the town that were listening to radio communication they there were feelings not to go out and search they returned away in fact they were told not
to go into the park where she was eventually found which is why we were asking for cameras to be installed because that you know maybe she wasn't there at that exact moment and ended up back there but that could have close the timeline or help monitor um they were told they would be summoned
for for trespassing after hours in the exact part so again I know your councel and again your your attorney is telling you to talk to the chief that's his advice advice to
when when I was in your seat I was not I was listening outside of that because we had a feeling why would I go to the department that I have a concern about to ask them if I should bring somebody else in and and that's why again your
recourse as council is only is only to go to the prosecutor's office that ask person and I've been in your shoes I know okay but yeah to answer your sorry to answer your original question yes they were asked to go away they were pushed away they turned away people
still going out and unfortunately they didn't extra or anything I know they investigation okay I just and I appreciate the extra time because I know this is out of order on that um we do appreciate this again this
is a strong concern now and we do hope it's one off but hope that it never happens again we do have to change I agree um okay moving on to the uh closing the motion to CL motion to close motion
second second okay all right the uh privilege of the four is closed moving on to new new oh all in favor new business consent agenda resolutions there are uh 10 of them kelse you're going to run through them
yep resolution yeah resolution 71 2025 acceptance of standing reports resolution 72 2025 accepting the resignation of kmen Moda affected February 28th 2025 resolution 73 2025 appointing Kelsey Miker Deputy regist Deputy Board
of Health secretary effective March 1st 2025 resolution 74 2025 appointing approving change order number one decreasing the total amount of contract for the 2023 do state A Douglas Lane record Lane and Princeton drive by
$632 6 3 Cent resolution 75 2025 resolution to support publishing legal notices on official government websites resolution 76 2025 of authorizing the tax collector to issue a tax title lean reduction for Block
86.02 Lot 8 resolution 77 2025 approving the temporary discharge approval application at the factory Lan site to be submitted by the mcua at the request of new fields on behalf of B crop Science Inc resolution 78 2025 off authorizing the tax collector to cancel
property taxes for Block 357 Lot 1 and two resolution 79 2025 resending resolution 60 2025 hiring the part-time electrical sub code official resolution 80 2025 accepting the resignation of Alex Alex August from the Department of Public
Works effective February 21st 2025 okay thank you Kelsey uh anybody have any resolutions they want to pull make questions about changes number 80 yeah okay anything
else guys good okay uh can I make uh well somebody has to make a motion for Resolutions 1 through nine not 10 motion okay second second second um roll call council president Kanan yes councilman KS yes councilman
Desa yes councilman Cino yes councilman doie yes councilman Grace yes okay so number 10 Bob yeah I see Alex is here that's well thank you Alex for your time I know uh you're a young guy like my son's age and I think you see your
future brighter somewhere else and I wish you all the luck so thanks for your time I appreciate it you know that you're going to be missed thank you okay keep an keep an eye on Hardy okay uh motion for number
10 motion second okay uh um couny have to do another roll call council president conad uh yes councilman K yes councilman Des yes councilman dinino yes councilman do yes councilman G yes okay moving on to
non-consent resolution 81 what was this you matter 81 2025 pay all claims motion motion uh second second okay uh Kelsey can take the roll Kel president conahan yes councilman G yes
councilman Danza yes councilman Dino yes councilman Dodie yes councilman GG yes okay moving on to the agenda Workshop item we have two I'm going to uh the Emergency Services volunteer fee waiver it's a lot I'm going to push that off till the next meeting uh just for the
sake of time that's something that I added I brought it up before it's just going to take a lot of time to go through it's a waiver for fees for our uh fire department our active fire department and um fire police Rescue and OEM so I think it deserves more time so
uh Kelsey's gonna add that to the next next meeting need a motion to table that to the next meeting you can yeah you can I mean you technically you could to amend your agenda you could do a motion we don't always follow that rule exactly Kelsey but you you can do it that way
yeah okay let's do it yeah let's do a motion just to to for motion second second okay all in favor okay uh so number one is tabled number two environmental commission recommends an ordinance regarding Evas evasive
plants um I I sent it to you guys it's also on page 70 this pack some of I mean we do have a bamboo ordinance already Linda told me we do have one already I mean it does make sense but some of the things I don't like about it is
um five so it includes bamboo plus other stuff right well yeah I mean I agree to somebody in basic species but my concern is who's going to who's going to monitor this and um who's going to enforce it because some of the things here it says a violation shall be given to the owner of
the property from which the invas of speech has spread in writing by certified male turn receip request remove the items within 30 days cost of all remedies inove removal plant remov property own and then it also goes down to saying put a lean on the
property for some of these things I mean like is that Chris is that the vast majority of our of our penalties do include that if they're ignored yeah at the lastage who enforces them uh I mean be Tyler so they would have to come here I
mean I I've only just seen this when the packet was distributed and and council president client and I had a separate discussion about this we did try this in a different client online never really got off the ground but I did review that that ordinance this is more robust the proposed ordinance that didn't get adopted is the one that I reviewed and
this I mean I we handle a lot of this in uh JB for new new construction yeah I mean you can't go they don't it's hard to enforce on that end too um you would you know it's not terribly unusual for for penalties to if they're not paid to
be leaned against the property um penalty it violation penalty in section six I did see somewhere yeah so it would be the general Bobby who wrote this got she got it from another town I I guess she got it yeah because it's not bad I mean you
know in terms of ordinance um it's a little bit more robust than the one that I was reviewing uh on the separate track um yeah it just the penalty is under your general penalty provision which is very close to5 if it's not um and you
just proceed with that so the towns are doing this uh uh we the other client is Bridgewater they elected not to do it they also thought enforcing it would be a problem um and they were just focused on bamboo you can see your laundry list here of plants um but it
also says in here I mean like basically your grandfather in in under number under four if it's been there already it's you know yeah I've seen I've seen grandfather clauses I've seen Clauses that allow for you know potted plants potted bamboo
plotted potted ivies um up to you guys really they're really strong on us I mean they really want this so I mean I don't have a problem yeah towns are doing it uh towns are do it's a problem definitely towns are doing it so I only just saw this you know and it's perfectly fine uh when agenda was
distributed happy to work with Claire okay know who does but you guys gota want to do it I'm not going to spend your money unless you I'm in favor of because I know there there there I think there's issues that we have to I mean a bamboo we have multiple spots we're dealing with now so yeah I mean you guys start finding people it is enforcement
is always the problem right with with these you and I had a long discussion today council president about enforcing other the nuisance type ordinance correct you know so you got to talk to Tyler I would you know or whoever you're going to have as the tip of the spear here typically be someone like Tyler or
Rob um but you know like I said it's not unheard of the environmental commission is right to flag the issue um do you guys want Chris to uh work on it come up with maybe something a little more streamlined and reintroduce it we could Workshop it again with a final version maybe call it down streamline though you
think CHR it's pretty pretty good they're pretty good I would say one thing you could do is it's there's a lot of different PL here and you don't really have a plant expert on um on staff uh yeah you might want to just try it with bamboo first and before you get
to the Japanese Barberry I'm just saying you could you know some of the stuff is pretty pretty common in New Jersey it's not so rare the Barberry but maybe we should check with director's you know um experimental station get some mag expertise in on this or you know work a
little bit more with the environmental commiss so would would only be the new plantings for obviously any of these how much is this going to run to to figure out if we can't grow plants and is there any way to make back that type of money like I love I love land I
love flowers and stuff but how I mean how many hours are we going to spend is it going to be effective well would the council I was also thinking oh you mean enforce it yeah would the council want to hear from the environmental Commission on yes idea
that's true actually why don't why don't they come in and and because yeah I have questions too and they can can be here get it all okay Bobby why don't we do that yeah Bobby we should also find out where this is from I the one that I modeled the one that we didn't adopt in my other town
was from Burlington Township in BR County it was not as robust as this I'd be curious I can email compare too um just to find out where this is from because I think it's good and you could also reach out to them and see how they've had uh the time that they've had enforcing it that's homework homework that can be done yeah the enforcement
Tower it's a big yeah yeah that's with all these always enforcement okay any guys anything else on this uh Workshop topic no okay I'm gonna I'm going to open it up um a motion to open it up to the public for
only the invasive plant discussion Mo okay motion second all in favor okay uh Bruce you go where's yours got bamboo and dangerous of bamboo now I had a neighbor that put bamboo he
did finally get rid of it um he had a burn it out and finally went away his son started it okay I agree on bamboo I agree with anything you want to set this up for for the burrow great I question
why the uh environmental committee is using their time to say you can only have New Jersey plant in your yard I don't like the idea of a grandfather because say the plant dies and I put something else in you are opening
yourself from lawsuits to the town I can see a case where hey my neighbor have this beautiful yard I have um what's that we creep and Charlie Creeping Charlie is a paning move you know what to get rid of you can't get rid of it
and they went into somebody's yard they complained to you guys you guys have to send the board guy a look at it and then I'm going to get fine because I can't get cre Charlie you're opening yourself for a lot of lawyer speed which works
good for him but it doesn't for really it would be really Tyler's time but the enforcement part Bruce you're right we have a you know part-time Cod I mean I mean if you're looking for money this is a great guy I but the point is we're not
in HOA I don't do not want anyone telling me what I can and she's hear this if you read her statement New Jersey plant you can't have a butterfly bush what is wrong with butterfly bush yeah maybe the acidity hurts a tree
there's a lot of trees the point is we are not an H they shouldn't be focusing on that they want to do some great work they should be advising you on how to handle that dump over there over there and how do we get um the EPA to start
doing stff they should be looking at um because I know they pontificate a lot what they should be looking at is spray t how do we get spray tax to pay those FS that's a great use of environmental committee they should not be dictating
to us people when we have higher taxes that um we have to uh only have New Jersey PL native so that means my elephant ears are no good and I I know it says in their grandpa you don't want to go there you
do not want to go there it's almost impossible it's almost impossible because like I said di I put something else in oh no no no I don't want a u German inspector coming around inspector cuso oh you have he's
French French yeah you're Continental you got a continental thing so Peters this opens us up this is not a good Focus for the environment I she's done great work with the trees she's done awesome work with um community
garden great ideas but this oversteps your I would hope that you guys consider what I just said shoot yeah good point Bruce and hopefully when that comes in for the next hopefully you'll attend oh
okay okay I hope so thanks anybody else for invasive uh plants