Jersey City homeowners experienced déjà vu this week when they received a second copy of their quarterly property tax bill, a mailing that included a note from Mayor Steve Fulop absolving himself from responsibility for the tax increase.
Property owners The Jersey Journal spoke with said the first mailing included just the tax bill. The second mailing contained two parts: a physical copy of the property tax bill and the mayor’s explanation for the approximately $1,000 per year tax increase (for the average homeowner).
Last year the city used COVID-19 relief funds to knock off $1,000 from the municipal portion of the average tax bill to offset the $1,000 school tax increase. The increase, officials say, is just returning to the 2020 level of taxation. A homeowner’s property tax is a combination of county, school and municipal levies.
A spokeswoman for the city said re-sending the mail corrected a mistake in which some residents did not receive the bill, the letter or both. She declined to say how many residents were affected or how much money the city spent sending the tax bill a second time. She said the Department of Finance was responsible for the mailing.
“This has been standard practice for the city for the last 30-plus years, where every mayor sends out a letter because the residents deserve an explanation of why their taxes have changed,” city spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione said.
But some property owners think the second round of mail was the mayor’s opportunity to push the narrative that the school district hasn’t been fiscally responsible.
Megan Carolan, a Jersey City homeowner, said she received her tax bill from the city in the last week of June with no letter from the mayor. Then on Tuesday, more mail came, this time with both the mayor’s letter and the tax bill. She said other property owners had the same experience.
In the letter attached to this quarter’s bills, Fulop said municipal taxes have held mostly the same in last few years.
The blame for a higher tax bill instead lies with a Board of Education that recently approved a $974 million budget for the 2022-2023 school year, a 15% increase over the previous year’s budget and a $1,600 increase in taxes for an average property owner.
“Despite our efforts to help reverse their course and my vocal opposition, the Board of Education continues to rely on raising taxes rather than taking responsibility to fix their budget without impacting classrooms,” Fulop wrote.
While some cynics are calling the “mistake” a convenient excuse, Carolan note this isn’t the first time that Jersey City had to correct a tax bill.
Last year Jersey City overcharged property owners for the recently added arts and culture tax in what was described as a “clerical error.” That money was refunded to taxpayers in their property tax bills for October.
Before that, in July 2021 the Municipal Utilities Authority overcharged property owners for a solid waste fee, in some cases by hundreds of dollars. The charges were a mistake by the MUA and Suez, the city’s water operator, Fulop said at the time.
The city refunded those who paid the high fees while directing others not to pay the fees at all until they were corrected.
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