Property Taxes

[Tax Payer-7407]

In The Sunday Star-Ledger, the state as well as Middlesex County Property Taxes by town for 2012 and percent change from the previous year were published.
Cranbury was ranked in Middlesex County number 1 in Average Assessment, County Tax ($2,254), and total tax ($11,099).
Cranbury slipped to number 2 in school tax ($6,240) and percent change (5.0%) tied with Jamesburg.
It dropped to number 4 in the county for municipal tax ($2,605). The county average was for municipal tax was $1,938.
The percent change in property tax for the county was 1.8% and the state was 1.7%. Our 5% was second in the county after Monroe's 8.4%.
Cranbury's high property tax ranking demands explanations and justifications. There may be nothing to cheer about!
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[anon-0n08]

You're leaving out selective facts. For example, Cranbury has one of the highest, if not the highest, average property values in the county. Higher property values tend to have higher absolute taxes, but not necessarily a high tax rate. Cranbury's taxes have definitely escalated significantly in the last 5 years. Before then, we had the second highest taxes in absolute dollars but the lowest tax rate in the county factoring in property values.

As a small town, we're particularly vulnerable to changes impacting our tax rate. Property values are down, which drive tax rates up. More importantly, they are down even lower for commercial properties than residential, shifting more of the burden to residential taxes. Five years ago commercial properties paid over half our taxes. Not anymore. We're also screwed by the state on school taxes because we're prosperous and have a good school. We send far more taxes to the state for education that we get back. We're subsidizing other schools in the county and state via this process. Jamesburg, Monroe, etc. get a huge amount of their budget from the state while we get a small single-digit percent. As that's declined, the tax rate for the school tax has gone up. Add to all this that we have a lot of infrastructure projects at the school and town. Dam, sewer, you name it. And don't forget unfunded "state mandates." They make up almost 40% of the schools budget.

[anon-73o5]

Need more warehouses and businesses in town. Stop making businesses jump through hoops to move in. Robbinsville just secured Amazon for their town. What's Cranbury doing? Buying more farm land and complaining.

[Response-anon-7407]

The quick convoluted and defensive response to the Cranbury Property Tax postings neglected the mention of the first ranked property assessment. Read it again, Charlie.
Facts are facts and no number of lame excuses can justify the high property taxes here.
Let's elect representatives who have some feeling fot the average taxpayer and cut out the justifications that neglect considering the pocketbook of those taxpayers.

[hey-8p94]

[anon-403n]

The farmland bought was in residential areas for the most part. There is only one area in the warehouse zone that was bought. Thus, it stopped damage from more housing stock.

You can easily lower the average assessed like the other towns and add more housing if the condo/ townhouse variety. That will drive down the average home value as condos don't sell for 500k in this area and will have more housing stock. Thus average property taxes will fall.

The township has fewer housing stock compared to most towns and even our low end homes have higher value. If you want a true comparison look at the taxes paid by the same cost home.

Or look at what you get. I'd take the Cranbury school system over every other town and then Plainsboro. I wouldn't touch the other schools in our county.

[anon-0n08]

[anon-403n]

I just looked at the table. If I look at cateret the average county bill is 811.37 vs us at 2,253.93. Yet their average municipal bill is 2461.73. So one would assume the only static rate is county. So this shows cateret is substantially higher on the municipal level.

Plainsboro pays the county 1,468.92. So they have a lower average home. Their municipal average is 1430.30 vs us at 2605. Very close given the county difference. On schools Plainsboro is 6336 vs us at 6240 so we have higher value home, but lower school on average. The avg tax we pay is 11,099.41, but Plainsboro is 9,2655.

Taking that Cranbury pays about 1.5x more to the county than Plainsboro let's equal the value out. 1.5x on municipal means Plainsboro would pay 2,194 on same value, 9768 for schools at the same value and overall 14,126 vs 11,099.41 for the same value home. Factor in if aid were the same and Cranbury would be even better.

It's not an easy apples to apples comparison if you only want to compare what one average home pays vs another if the home values are not equal.

[mr ploppy-109q]

When all of those warehouses moved in a few years ago, our taxes actually went down a bit!
Then the owners caught wise and had the town take a look at the residential tax rates and VOOM!
Up the taxes went.
The assessment company had the nerve to say that my place was worth well over 600k, when it was really about half of that at the time.
They were a bunch of pinheads.
I guess they were the lowest bidder.
Those warehouse owners knew what they were getting into when they built here. Why did they have to upset the apple cart?
They also wanted Cranbury to build some "affordable housing" to house the workers that worked in the warehouses for slave wages.

Must be a nice racket to be a builder in this state!!!!!!!!!

[anon-8q9r]

What would you change?

[anon-97on]

[publius-109q]

[anon-8455]

Higher property value does not justify nor should we allow our community to continue to rank number one for highest taxes.

[anon-40n0]

Without significantly reducing services, it would be refreshing to see some proactive suggestions that would save the town money to support a reduced budget.
I believe our TC is open to suggestions.
So my advice is give a little more suggestion, and a little less criticism.
Nobody likes paying more taxes, it just doesn't seem productive to continue to complain about it.