JERSEY CITY – Mayor Steven M. Fulop announced on April 15 that his administration has met with tax experts and will move forward with the required property tax revaluation ordered by the State of New Jersey earlier this month. Jersey City will begin drafting and commencing the RFP process per the state order. At the same time, the administration will appeal this week’s court decision on the Healy administration revaluation contract and in addition will seek legislative changes at the state level to the process of revaluation to minimize disruption to long-time residents.
Jersey City is one of 30 municipalities which has not done a revaluation in 25 years and is one of three municipalities that have been ordered by the state to start the process. The process to conduct a new reval will begin with the administration drafting a Request for Proposals (RFP) to seek a vendor with an award expected in the fall of 2016.
“From the beginning, our position has been the same, which is that we acknowledge the city needs a reval, but the reval process started by the previous administration would have resulted in unfair taxation due to the corrupt procurement process,” said Mayor Fulop. “We attempted to recover dollars that were wrongly procured; however, with the court’s initial decision yesterday, we will respect the comments and by starting the revaluation process we will eliminate the court’s view that the city’s sole interest is to delay the revaluation which was never the case. However, while moving forward on the RFP, we will also appeal the court’s decision and continue to pursue the dollars that were illegally spent.”
Further, Fulop said, the administration has started a working group to partner with state representatives to amend the state law so that disruption is minimal to long-term residents.
On April 14, the court ruled against Jersey City, ordering the city to pay for the revaluation Fulop ordered halted in 2013.
The judge’s decision April 14 requires the city to pay Realty Appraisal $984,511 plus interest and attorney’s fees dating to October 2015. Prior to the Fulop administration halting the reval contract in 2013, the firm had already been paid $1.98 million, which the city will also seek to recoup during the appeal process.
The last reval in Jersey City was in 1988.
The timeline for the new reval is issuing an RFP with a contract expected to be awarded in the fall of 2016 with work to commence shortly thereafter.
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