Jersey City mayor delivers third State of the City address

Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop announced today the city is moving forward with the long-stalled reval. Reena Rose Sibayan | The Jersey Journal

(Jersey Journal file photo)

Jersey City, here comes the reval.



One day after the city lost a breach-of-contract case related to the long-stalled property revaluation, and nearly two weeks after New Jersey tax officials ordered the city to get a reval done by November 2017, the city announced it is moving ahead with the process.



It will be the first citywide revaluation of properties since 1988. The city said it will soon begin the search for a firm to perform the work and expects to have chosen a company by the fall.

The move comes as Fulop has faced increased pressure to complete reval, both from state officials who say the citywide ratio of assessed to true value is so low it violates the New Jersey Constitution, and, most recently, from a group of pastors and community activists who say stalling a reval protects wealthy residents at the expense of people living in the city's less affluent neighborhoods.

Fulop also announced today that his administration will appeal yesterday's ruling in the breach-of-contract case Realty Appraisal Co. filed after Fulop in 2013 halted the citywide reval the firm was hired in 2011 to oversee. A judge yesterday sided with the West New York company, saying Fulop had acted in bad faith when he stopped all reval work and refused to pay the company nearly $1 million it was owed.

"The decision to do a revaluation now after the contrary statements of the last few weeks seems political," Phil Elberg, Realty Appraisal's attorney, told The Jersey Journal. "It is too bad that my clients and the taxpayers have been punished by the time it took to get to this point."

The mayor also said today that he will seek changes to state laws governing property revaluations. He suggested assessing properties only when they are sold so that longtime residents are protected from abrupt changes brought on by revals, a change not likely to be approved by state officials who say taxes must be uniform.

"The state law for revaluations is fundamentally flawed and compounds the issues of gentrification by squeezing out long-term residents," Fulop said in a statement. "This administration never has supported the idea of collateral damage with homeowners losing their homes in the name of social justice."

Revaluations square the assessed value of each property in a municipality with that property's true value. Since Jersey City has gone 28 years since its last reval, its ratio of assessed to true properties is just 27.6 percent, the worst in Hudson County.

Jersey City Together, the new group of congregations and nonprofits that confronted Fulop over the reval at an often tense meeting at Old Bergen Church, issued a statement today saying Fulop has made a "right and just decision."



"If done well, a revaluation will end the unfairness of our current property tax system," the statement reads. "We look forward to working to ensure this revaluation is done well for our city."

When New Jersey tax officials ordered Jersey City, Dunellen and Elizabeth last week to get their revals done by next year, they said Harrison and East Newark would likely be next. This week, Hudson County's taxation board ordered Bayonne to finish a reval by 2019. Its last was in 1991.

State Treasury spokesman Joseph Perone said the state is "pleased that Mayor Fulop has finally agreed to cooperate and join hundreds of other towns in complying with the law, which requires uniform taxation."



"We are hopeful that the other mayors also will abide by the state constitution, which they swore an oath to uphold," Perone said.

Fulop critics have alleged he halted the reval in 2013 so he could escape the political consequences -- it is widely believed that many Downtown property owners would see their assessments and tax bills rise dramatically. Fulop has denied this accusation, saying the contract given to Realty Appraisal in 2011 was illegal and that the city shouldn't move forward with a reval until his administration exhausted all efforts to get back the $2 million paid to the company.

The city will not be able to use any of the data Realty Appraisal collected during the aborted reval. New Jersey requires reval firms use data from the previous three years.

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