Dear Editor:
In the mid ‘70’s we bought a house in Hoboken for less than 50 thousand dollars. Some neighbors on the block thought we had paid too much. Over the years we paid our property taxes, whatever the assessment was, and just before the recent reval, we were paying around $3,500 a quarter, or $14,000 a year. We thought it was a lot for what we received from the county and city, but we paid.
Perhaps because a nearby house, identical to ours, was recently gutted and rehabbed, and bought by a Wall St. lawyer, our house, along with his, was assessed by the recent reval at more than a million and a half dollars.
The new tax bill reflecting this reval came as a shock. Besides the two quarters we had already paid, $7,000, we now had to pay $9,000 in August, and another $9,000 in November, which we have just paid. We paid City Hall $25,000 for the privilege of living in Hoboken in 2014.
In 2015 our new tax rate will be a little over $6,000 per quarter, in other words, $25,000 a year.
Whose fault is it that City Hall has not done a reval in 25 years? Not ours, so why should we have to play “catch up” all in one year? Where is all this new doubling of money going to go? Last year, before the reval, City Hall and the county had enough money to pay teachers, firemen, cops, garbage, public works, clerks, tax collectors, and the usual hangers-on. There was enough. Nobody went hungry. Kids got educated. Trash got picked up. Cops rode around with sirens blaring. So, even though our houses are “worth” what reval says they are, and even though City Hall can legally collect taxes based on that “worth” – why should they do it?
They shouldn’t, and if they do, those to whom they do it have every right to protest and revolt.
Anonymous