Zimmer backs down on ‘rolling reassessment’; proposes revals every six years

HOBOKEN — The administration of Mayor Dawn Zimmer is backing off of its plans for a rolling annual revaluation of property values for the next four years. In a letter to the Hoboken City Council released Nov. 26, Zimmer announced that she placed an ordinance on the agenda of the council’s upcoming Dec. 3 meeting requiring a revaluation only every six years.
Zimmer said she changed her mind after “many members of the community expressed strong reservations about the impact that the rolling revaluation might have on their taxes going forward” in letters and at a Nov. 12 community meeting.
After the news about the reval was broken in the Reporter two weeks ago, the newspaper received several letters as well.
However, Zimmer still argues that revaluations must be done regularly, and that property value assessments cannot be allow to lapse for 25 years, as the city did before its 2013 revaluation.
All nine City Council members voted in favor of the contract with Appraisal Systems to undergo the rolling reassessment in September. Since then, however, the four Council members unaffiliated with Zimmer have come out publicly against the contract, arguing that it will raise taxes and had been misrepresented when it was presented to the council.
If the council passes Zimmer’s new proposal, she said, “there will be no rolling reassessment” of property values over the next four years, meaning that the contract with Appraisal Systems will have to be terminated. However, it was not totally clear as of press time whether the work Appraisal Systems has already completed for this year’s revaluation will be used to alter property values. The city has already paid out some money to the company.
Zimmer said that rescinding the approval for the Appraisal Systems contract, as the four Zimmer opponents on the council have proposed, is technically not possible, so it has to be done by passing her new proposal.. The city’s contract with Appraisal Systems, she wrote, “has already been executed…[and] the authorization to enter into it can no longer be rescinded by the City Council.”