Property Revaluations Discussed During Chatham Borough Meeting

CHATHAM, NJ — Starting next month, the borough's properties will be revalued and borough officials discussed the process at this week's council meeting to explain why it is necessary.

At the regular meeting of the Borough of Chatham Council on Monday night, Jason Cohen of Appraisal Systems, Inc. and Therese DePierro, Chatham Borough tax assessor, provided an update and answered questions from the mayor and council.

The Morris County Board of Taxation ordered Chatham Borough to perform revaluations, which were last done in 2005.

The letters will be distributed in November, and residents will have the opportunity to meet with Appraisal Systems, Inc. representatives at informal hearings held in the borough hall beginning in late November and running through the end of December, according to officials.

The new county tax assessment goes into effect this month and is expected to be finalized in county tax records in early January. The deadline for filing formal revaluation appeals is May 1, 2023.

According to Cohen, the revaluation will assess values at 100 percent and "fairly distribute" taxes throughout the borough. Cohen stated that the revaluation is "revenue neutral" for the borough.

Borough officials have stressed that the process does not imply that all residents and business owners will face higher property taxes; rather, the new tax rates are based on borough-wide averages.

"When a municipality goes through a reval, they are not increasing the budget, they are increasing the assessments, usually, sometimes when you do a reval you bring assessments down but in this case, they are going to rise," Cohen said. "When that happens, since the budget is not increasing, the tax rate drops. In easy math, if the assessment base goes up by two times, your tax rate is going down by half because revaluation is revenue neutral to the town."

Cohen stated that taxes could rise, fall, or stay unchanged. He described it as a pie, with the assessment determining the size of each taxpayer's slice.

"We aren't growing the pie. We are leaving the pie exactly the same size, we're just cutting everyone a new slice. So your slice may grow or shrink from where you are now to where you'll be in 2023. Individually you will see those changes," Cohen said.

Residents whose property values have risen faster than the borough average can expect higher tax rates, while those whose values have risen more slowly can expect lower tax rates. Residents whose properties have increased in line with the borough average should not anticipate an increase in their tax rates.

In recent months, neighboring communities have also been called to undergo tax assessments, the most recent being Morristown, which was called to be revalued for the first time in nearly two decades.