Jersey City lawmakers in the state Legislature want to halt implementation of this year's property revaluation until 2019, citing the "fiscal shock" faced by property owners anticipating huge tax hikes.

The bill, (S-2566), would allow municipalities who did not apply reval results to tax bills before April 1 to postpone doing so until Jan. 1, 2019. The delay would allow for towns to provide "revaluation relief abatements" or "mitigate fiscal shock" from steep tax hikes. The bill was introduced last week.

"The bill's short delay in achieving uniform property taxation in this instance is outweighed by the compelling public purpose to provide the impacted municipalities with authority to mitigate fiscal shock associated with a long overdue revaluation, and thus maintain the stability and viability of their neighborhoods and communities," the bill reads.

The three lawmakers behind the bill are state Sens. Sandra B. Cunningham and Brian Stack and Assemblyman Raj Mukherji. Requests for comment from the three were not returned.

Cunningham and Mukherji both own property in Jersey City. Preliminary information from the company conducting Jersey City's reval indicated both will see tax cuts with their new appraisals.

The long-delayed reval is the city's first since 1988. The aim is to square every property's assessment — its value on the city's tax rolls — with its true value. The skyrocketing property values in some areas of the city over the last three decades has led to some wide disparities between those two values, especially in the city's upscale Downtown neighborhoods. Some property owners have been told to expect tax hikes that top $20,000 when the August tax bills are mailed.

Mayor Steve Fulop, who faced angry homeowners at reval-related meetings earlier this year, initially proposed a second reval as a solution, saying it would "correct" the dip in home values expected to accompany larger tax bills. Fulop quickly dropped that idea and said he opposes the bill under consideration by lawmakers.

"It's been 30 years + our team has done the work to do it properly/fairly," Fulop said on Twitter Monday. "At this point we would not like to see any further delay. The bill is well intended but I think mechanics would make it more difficult."

Fulop has faced criticism for halting a reval that was nearly complete in 2013 and delaying the current one as the city fought a breach-of-contract lawsuit filed by the company hired to conduct the first one. The city lost that case and was forced to pay the company, Realty Appraisal Co., more than $1 million.

During the 2013-2016 delay, Fulop argued that a reval would hurt homeowners citywide. He has recently argued that most people in the city will benefit.

The most recent new appraisal information from Appraisal Systems, which is conducting Jersey City's reval, includes 43,664 properties. Of those, 21,494 would see no tax change or a tax cut and 22,170 would see a tax hike. 13,248 would see a tax hike over $1,000.

Councilman James Solomon, who represents most of Downtown, supports a delay. Solomon noted that, because the reval was not completed before homeowners received their first two tax bills of 2018, anyone facing a tax hike will have to pay the entire tax hike in the last half of the year.

"Homeowners may lose their homes when they are forced to pay back taxes for the first and second quarters in 2018," Solomon said in an email. "However, to make it fair to the entire city, it must be paired with a commitment to annual reassessments to prevent this entire process from happening again."

One Hudson County politico said the bill could "backfire" by angering property owners poised to get tax cuts. One of them is Helen Hou-Sandi, a Greenville resident who called the bill "shocking" and criticized it for focusing on helping taxpayers who live in the city's "coveted neighborhoods."

Hou-Sandi may see a $1,645 decrease after the reval (she successfully appealed her assessment in 2015). She noted that her neighbors, who have a nearly identical new assessment and did not file an appeal, are expected to receive a $5,281 tax cut post-reval.

"Where are the calls to compensate homeowners such as myself who bought in Greenville in 2013 just as the previous reval was canceled, leaving my family paying approximately double what we should have been paying all this time?" she said. "Maybe I need to crowdfund $25,000 from those who've gotten away with underpaying for so long."

Solomon acknowledged that delaying the reval's implementation would hurt residents like Hou-Sandi.

"The whole process is terrible," he said. "But I have families who helped build this town about to be forced out of their homes when their August tax bill comes in and this bill helps them prepare."

The law would also apply to Weehawken, which is wrapping up its latest reval. That town's mayor, Richard Turner, told The Jersey Journal he would not consider delaying its implementation to 2019.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.