WE ADVISE - YOU DECIDE
PILOT or Suicide Bomber, you decide
When the Matawan-Aberdeen School Board announced a zero budget increase this year the taxpayers of Matawan still saw their school taxes rise while our neighbors in Aberdeen saw their school taxes decrease .This was confusing to many taxpayers in both towns. Of course the revaluation of properties coming to Matawan a year before Aberdeen’s revaluation had an effect. The decline in real estate prices are more accurately reflected in Aberdeen’s later reval and no amount of “Equalized Valuation Math” will remedy that.
There is another component in the allocation of school taxes between the towns that also explains the lopsided savings. It’s called Avalon at Aberdeen Station. This is the 290 unit apartment complex overlooking the parkway off lower Main Street in Aberdeen. This complex sold for $57,600,000 in June, 2006. Instead of paying real estate taxes on the buildings, The Avalon makes a Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT) to Aberdeen Township. This allows Aberdeen to keep all the proceeds from this ratable and not share any with the school board. This has its own ramifications in Aberdeen but in Matawan it causes the taxpayers to pick up an unfair share of the school tax.
When the school board determines the amount of money they need for the school budget, the amount is allocated between the towns based on assessed valuation. This means that Aberdeen and Matawan’s total assessed valuation from real properties are added together after applying a factor to adjust for market to assessed value. Aberdeen pays their percentage of assessed value to the total assessed value and so does Matawan. The percentage is approximately 67% for Aberdeen and 33% for Matawan.
Unfortunately for Matawan taxpayers, the buildings at The Avalon are assessed at $29,723,900 and this entire amount is not included anywhere in the calculation. A $29,723,900 ratable for Aberdeen is not even in the equation when the school tax is allocated between the towns. Matawan taxpayers pick up the tab and Aberdeen gets to spend the PILOT money in Aberdeen and bypass the school tax. This win- win for Aberdeen is a drain on the taxpayers of Matawan.
Even a swing of 1% in the allocation of the school tax between the towns would represent significant saving to Matawan residents. This year’s school budget was $62 million and 1% of $62 million equals $620,000. That equals about 5 tax points in Matawan and would be some real tax relief to Matawan residents.
When Aberdeen granted this special treatment to the developer of The Avalon, Matawan’s Republican Mayor was Rob Clifton and Matawan’s council was made up of 6 Republicans, including Paul Buccellato. The land that was developed was owned by Joseph Rettagliata, Chairman of the Monmouth County Planning Board and owner of Strathmore Cleaners. Shortly after the apartment complex was built the politically ambitious Mayor of Matawan, Rob Clifton was asked to run for Monmouth County Freeholder. And Matawan taxpayers have been left paying a disproportionate share of school taxes ever since.
Why didn’t Matawan’s leadership fight Aberdeen’s plan to designate this land a redevelopment zone and collect a PILOT instead of real estate taxes?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
A couple of corrections -
ReplyDelete1) Aberdeen pays over $200,000 a year from the PILOT funds to the district
2) $62 million refers to the budget, not the tax levy
3) Aberdeen pays a higher per child rate than Matawan since over a third of students are from Matawan
4) There's no evidence to show that Matawan pays an inflated share of the school tax levy because its revaluation happened a year earlier. The county's equalization table is adjusted every year
5) Your assumption that Avalon would have been built without a PILOT program is an uneducated guess