HIGH BRIDGE — This borough of around 3,650 residents has the dubious distinction of making the Top 30 list of New Jersey municipalities with the highest tax burden.
High Bridge is 11th from the top (worst) on the list, based on new research issued Wednesday by the Rutgers Center for Government Services. Researcher Ernest Reock Jr. did the study using data from 2008, which he said was the most recent available.
High Bridge Mayor Mark Desire, who began service as mayor in 2007, and his predecessor, Al Schweikert, are blaming each other for the property tax situation.
The one thing they agree on is, the taxes are too high. The men used almost the same words to say taxes are “too high in High Bridge, too high in Hunterdon County and too high in New Jersey.”
The borough’s financial problems, according to Schweikert, are because “our municipal tax rate went up 100% the year after I went out of office,” he said Friday. He was exaggerating, but just a little: the amount to be raised increased 92% in 2007, according to the borough’s website. It went up 6% in 2008, and since then has gone up or down less than 2% each year.
Desire, for his part, said Schweikert and his administration "doubled the budget in 2006, using surplus to pay for it," and with the surplus depleted, Council had to raise taxes considerably the following year. Schweikert has criticized various tax and spending decisions during the Desire tenure.
After the tax rate jumped from 39 cents per $100 of assessed valuation to 75 cents in 2007, it’s continued to stay in that range, going up to 81 cents in 2012 and 84.2 cents last year.
High Bridge is the only Hunterdon municipality on Reock's list. It’s led by Woodlynne in Camden County. The other 28, in order from worst, are: Roselle, Salem City, Woodbury, Hillside, Lawnside, West Orange, Laurel Springs, Orange, Lindenwold, Haledon, East Orange, Prospect Park, Penns Grove, North Plainfield, Stratford, Somerdale, Barrington, Glassboro, Ridgefield Park, Bloomingdale, Newton, Irvington, Willingboro, Pohatcong, Pompton Lakes, Mount Ephraim, Washington Borough and Magnolia.
Desire points to “six years of stable taxes” and believes things will continue to improve. But he allowed that close to half of the borough is open space. “About 22 percent of our budget is debt” to acquire land and for other projects, he said.
“We’re too small of a town to have that much open space” which is not taxed, he said. One place is the High Bridge Hills golf course, built on a former cattle farm. According to Desire, once the golf course debt is paid off in eight years, “it will be a revenue stream for us.”
Schweikert, who was mayor for 12 years, said that since then he has voiced objections to various expensive projects in High Bridge, to no avail.
Regarding Lake Solitude and its eventual preservation, he said when he was mayor, the state would send him papers, offering to lend the borough money, “and I would send them back, saying we cannot afford that.”
Major renovations to the Lake Solitude Dam were made in 2011 and 2012, with the contractor getting about $2.4 million and more pubic funds going to engineers and others involved in the massive project. High Bridge took a state loan, with a 2 percent interest rate, for the work.
It had to be fixed, Desire said, and now that it's done the town is moving forward to use the dam for hydro-electric power, a project he expects to be started this year.
Besides the revenue from selling electricity, the borough plans to create a learning center at the lake, “so kids can go up there and learn about ‘green’ energy,” he said.
Schweikert said he’s worried now that the construction of a new Borough Hall will put the town further in debt that its property owners can’t easily pay. Council voted Jan. 2 to seek bids for the project, which will be an addition to the High Bridge Emergency Squad building.
According to Desire, it’s budgeted at $450,000 and the federal government approved using for the new construction the $240,000 it earlier granted to refurbish the current Borough Hall to make it handicap-accessible.
The new hall space will be much more efficient than the 100-year-old building that has 15 rooms but just five employees, he said. The old hall will be sold for private use, he said.
“For the first time, we’re going to put a piece of property back on the tax rolls,” he said.
The researcher who prepared the report, Ernest Reock Jr., used a dozen factors to come up with a “Property Tax Burden Index” and Woodlynne came in at 4.97. High Bridge was 4.13 and Magnolia, 3.85.
The tiny borough of Alpine in Bergen County, known as the country’s “wealthiest zip code,” had the lightest property tax burden relative to the determinants. They include levels of school taxes, county taxes, property tax bases and personal income, as well as levels of school enrollments and costs, non-tax municipal revenue, level of residential property compared with other types, state school aid and state tax rebates.
An authority on state government, Reock officially retired in 1992 as director of CGS, but continues to do research and teach part-time for the center. His research concluded that the heaviest property tax burdens are found in small, older suburbs that have low property tax bases and limited personal incomes among their residents.
He also found:
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