Centralized Property Assessment Program Being Tested In South Jersey
By John McDevitt
WOODBURY, N.J. (CBS) - It has been in place for five years, and now a centralized property assessment program is being tested in Gloucester County. The goal: to save money and not have property owners pay too little or too much for property taxes.
The report card is in and Gloucester County freeholders say the program is a major success. Instead of the each of the 24 municipalities paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to assess properties, they are done in one county office.
Freeholder Director Robert M. Damminger says in the past, some municipalities couldn't afford to do evaluations, and as a result, some property owners were paying too little tax and others too much:
"The system was broken and in defense of the municipalities, everybody in this economy was struggling with their budgets and things like that and that is where our shared services could help. It wasn't that these towns didn't want do these evaluations, frankly at the end of the day they couldn't afford to do the evaluations."
Damminger says the number of Tax Board appeals have been reduced by 64-percent.