Closed doors

Inspectors gained entry to only half of Middlesex Borough’s taxable properties during the 2022 revaluation, an effort aimed at determining accurate assessments.

Real estate owners are not required, by law, to allow in property assessors. With a new five-year cyclical reassessment launching this month, officials are mulling whether to dissuade property owners from denying future access.

Tax Assessor Dawn Guttschall attended the Borough Council’s Tuesday, Sept. 24 meeting to speak about the new reassessment. During the presentation, Guttschall acknowledged the ratio of local properties visited by inspectors two years ago. 

“We only got 50% entry on the reval,” she said. “We’d like to see a higher amount.”

Guttschall saw 2022’s lingering COVID-19 worries as a factor in inspectors being denied property access. Mayor Jack Mikolajczyk and the Borough Council did not dispute a suggestion raised during public comments that some homeowners might have had additional concerns.

Those reasons may have included hidden zoning violations or home improvements for which no municipal permits had been obtained.

Later, Mikolajczyk said borough officials may discuss increasing the assessed values for property owners who continue to keep out tax inspectors. In some cases, they might get raised higher than what the market reflects.

Assessors in some towns use that as a sort-of warning to property owners to allow tax inspector access. Guttschall said she did not use that tactic in 2022 against those who denied reval reviewers entry. Instead, online sources, comparable home sales and other data were used to adjust the values of those properties.

“I particularly don’t believe in that practice,” Guttschall said of retaliating for lack of inspector access. “I have not done that or told my inspectors to do that. But it’s legal to do.”

Property owners who want to appeal their assessment in tax court will not have their case heard if they’ve denied inspector access, Guttschall said.

Otherwise, Guttschall spent most of the council session explaining the reasoning for the reassessment that is kicking off only two years after the town-wide revaluation. The first phase of the five-year reassessment will see about 70 blocks in the northeastern section of Middlesex, near the Green Brook border, eyed for inspections this fall.

Twenty percent of the borough’s tax lots are due for inspection each year. In theory, every property would be inspected during the five-year cycle. The reassessment program has two goals. One is to keep assessed values close to market value. The other is to limit the cost of that work.

The 2022 reval – the first conducted in Middlesex Borough in 36 years – cost roughly $300,000, according to officials. Guttschall said the new five-year reassessment cycle will cost about $35,000 annually.

The revaluation shifted the borough’s tax burden. Guttschall said that collectively, Middlesex Borough’s commercial properties saw their assessments increased by about 500% under the reval, whereas residential properties were upped by about 300%. “For I don’t know how many years, the commercial properties weren’t really paying their fair share,” she said.

The state ordered the 2022 reval due to several factors, according to Guttschall. Among them was the length of time since values were previously adjusted. Another was that Middlesex real estate was being assessed at only 24% of its market value.

Given the recent reval, Guttschall said, some have questioned the quick move to the five-year cyclical reassessment. “It’s a program where the town can keep annual maintenance of its records so we don’t have to wait many years before we reval again,” she said of the reassessment.

In order to do the annual, state-regulated reassessment, she added, the program must be started no more than a year after a revaluation. The reval inspections were conducted in 2022 and the new values reflected in August 2023 tax bills.

All residential and commercial properties will be reviewed in a given year, regardless of whether they lie within the 20% visited by inspectors, Guttschall said.

Mikołajczyk said the cyclical reassessment program is intended to keep tax apportionment equitable. He noted that a typical assumption is that a property owner who experienced a tax bill reduction after the 2022 revaluation “made out.”

The mayor disputed that view. That hypothetical taxpayer, he said, was actually overpaying their tax share for years, prior to the reval. “I can tell you in my own case, I bought somebody a car,” Mikolajczyk said.

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