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Sadly, Schundler took office amid similar hopes that someone sophisticated in Wall Street shenanigans would protect us. Instead he used the shenanigans as smoke and mirrors to make his administration look more sound that it was, and we're still paying for it.

As for numbers, it's amazing that these things are extremely difficult to find online or comprehend if you do, you'd think govt and public authorities would be required by law to publish their budgets, and in a manner a layman could understand. I once looked at the "layman" version of the JC schools budget to see what's spent on special ed. Not a chance, there's too many unexplained terms that even googling couldn't define, and apparently overlapping and redundant budget lines. You'd think the budgets of the MUA or JCPA would be on their sites, you'd be wrong.

I vaguely remember reading that it is around $750 million...
I am sure someone here knows the number for sure...

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anyone know what the outstanding city debt level is?

Cities are routinely sold questionable debt deals by Wall St who love the easy fees and lack of sophistication on the other side of the deal. Fulop can hopefully at least prevent more lousy debt deals for JC... Not much he can do with what is already out there.

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Is there a class I can take to help me understand any of this? I'm serious.

My first sentence says I am not giving Healy a pass. The problem is also compounded by the fact, rent controlled buildings cannot pass along a tax increase and receive relief by also filing appeals in tax court. Plus when tax abatement expires, the developer usually runs to tax court and win a tax appeal. It is the city debt that is ruining this city. We have been bonding for operating expenses as a matter of course since the fiscal year adjustment bonds, which was 1991. I was shocked when the city starting paying $20 million in the budget for debt service. We are now paying $60 million and debt service is outside the 2% cap imposed by the state. Yes, Healy did not manage the city as well has he should have but he also inherited a mess from Schundler and McCann.

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Doesn't this suggest Healy was complicit with the problem and compounded it by allowing developers to to have a free run without contributing to our infrastructure or fiscal needs, when all they did was make it worse and given abatements?

I am not giving Healy a pass on raising taxes. 84% is outrageous but this tax increase must be share by former Mayor McCann who floated $128.9 million for Fiscal Year 1991 in which city was told to float bonds for missing state aid. McCann went beyond what was need, Bayonne only floated $10 million. We should have bonded perhaps for $30 million. This money went to pay police and fire including pension. We are still paying that amount. Mayor Schundler also financially destroyed the city. While many people here don't agree with me on abatements, he gave away the city through abatements and the ratable base fell. The ratable base under Schundler was as low as $5.1 billion. Under Healy some long term abatements expired and the city was close to $6 billion but it has slipped down to $5.7 billion. The higher the ratable base, the lower the taxes. Schundler also did a great deal of bonding. He structured many the bonds to pay interest while he was in office, and principal kicked in after 2001 when he left. There is enough blame to go around.

Healy f-uped this city and did nothing for our infrustructure and amenities. His development policy and approvals have over-stretched our sewer and water supply plus our technology infrustructure and has done nothing to facilitate the population and apartment explosion with no vision for our streets / traffic flow and transportation needs.

The developers and Healy will be laughing all the way to the bank and I have no doubt Healy will have a role in the building industry when he sorry ass is out of office.

I can see Healy and Comey directing traffic for some developer, which is also a scam set-up by the JCPD

?Winning the election was one thing, but knocking us in the ass on the way out must be something else they wanted to achieve,? Healy said yesterday in a City Hall conference room.

- no, Mayor Bye-Bye, it's the residents who'd like to knock you on your ass. if you can't leave with dignity, then just leave.

Jersey City's outgoing mayor and mayor-elect are butting heads over budget figures

By Terrence T. McDonald/The Jersey Journal
May 31, 2013 at 8:07 AM

About an hour after polls closed in the May 14 Jersey City mayoral race, outgoing Mayor Jerramiah Healy and Mayor-elect Steve Fulop pledged to work together for the good of the city.

Those shiny, happy feelings lasted about two weeks.

Now, the outgoing and incoming mayors are sniping over the proposed 2013 budget, with each man blaming the other for a possible tax hike.


Fulop says the city administration fudged the numbers so Healy could campaign on keeping taxes stable, while Healy says Fulop is trying to embarrass him in his administration?s final days.

?Winning the election was one thing, but knocking us in the ass on the way out must be something else they wanted to achieve,? Healy said yesterday in a City Hall conference room.

The sparring began at Wednesday?s City Council meeting when city budget officials (at Fulop?s behest) offered a budget amendment that would have increased the local tax levy by about $16 million, a roughly 8 percent hike. Healy opposes the amendment.

The council voted not to add the amendment to its agenda after four Healy allies changed their votes from ?yes? to ?no? leading Fulop to accuse Healy?s administration of ?playing games with numbers.?

Fulop alleges the $500 million spending plan, which has yet to be adopted, was kept artificially low to assist Healy?s re-election campaign and says the council should now adopt a budget that is ?factual based.?

?All I?m saying is for Jerry to finally be accountable,? Fulop said. ?It?s not about kicking anybody on the way down.?

Most of the $16 million gap between the introduced budget and the proposed amended budget involves a $12 million sale of city land by the Jersey City Medical Center. Fulop says there is no buyer. Healy insists there is but won?t say who.

?This is realistic projected revenue,? Healy said. ?To say we misled the public, which is what the councilman said, is absolutely false.?

Assistant Business Administrator Bob Kakoleski told the council if it wants to adopt the budget by July 1 when Fulop becomes mayor state officials won?t allow the city to include revenue from the property sale. The revenue could be added if the budget is adopted later in the year, Kakoleski said.

If the budget is adopted as introduced, taxes remain stable. The amended budget shot down by the council Wednesday night would hike municipal taxes by about $258 for a homeowner with an average $93,500 assessment.

The final council meeting of this term is on Wednesday, June 19. Fulop said he hopes the nine-member body will adopt the proposed amended budget on that date.

?Option two is a new council and I will bear the burden of cleaning up their mess,? he said.

http://www.nj.com/jjournal-news/index ... ys_outgoing_mayor_an.html

There's a real gap in independent reporting and analysis on Jersey City's fiscal situation.

I would love to see someone - even from a campaign - produce a report on exactly where we stand, giving some real numbers.

That would be a real public service.

Based on the text of the article below, I come away with the impression that the reval *is* done and they are just sitting on the numbers. Am I off on this understanding? The writing is not very clear, of course.

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It positions the revaluation as ongoing ("however it turns out") but it then goes on to say that it will not go into effect until the second half of this year. Given the massive amount of data that would need to be processed and entered into the tax records, that would indicate that the reval is nearing completion, or is already completed. The Fulop allegations referred to in the article also seem to indicate that the reval is done, as his campaign is contending that the reval implementation is being pushed back for political reasons. So, does anyone know for sure?? And, if the reval IS done, can a homeowner request information on his property valuation for planning purposes?

Stable taxes, or election year gag?
Mayor, rival trade barbs over new $486M budget

by E. Assata Wright
Reporter staff writer - Mar 03, 2013 |

The $486 million municipal budget presented by the administration of Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy for 2013 currently does not include a tax increase. But the mayor?s critics say that he may still intend to raise taxes next year. They also note that many residents could see a tax hike this year thanks to a property revaluation that could significantly readjust the tax bills on thousands of homes and commercial spaces.

Property taxes and the revaluation are expected to be among the top issues of significance to voters in this year?s municipal elections, which will be held Tuesday, May 14.

In recent years, property taxes in Jersey City have spiked and have led to protests, a failed effort to recall Healy, and a movement led by Councilman Steve Fulop to defeat Healy at the polls.

The Healy administration unveiled the 2013 municipal budget on Feb. 27 at the City Council meeting, two days after the mayor gave a brief budget presentation to the council at its biweekly caucus meeting.

At the caucus briefing, Healy said his administration plans to keep taxes stable this year thanks to increased and unexpected revenue from various sources. The city, for example, expects to generate $7 million more in tax abatement payments this year than in 2012. (Abatements, also known as ?payments in lieu of taxes,? are payments from developments that have a separate tax agreement with the city rather than paying regular fluctuating taxes.) In addition, a recent audit of tax-abated developments found that some abated properties were paying the city less than they owed, and as a result, those developments will have to pay an extra $3 million this year.

The city also expects to get increased revenue from hotel and parking taxes, although Healy did not specify how much, and from the sale of municipal property and taxi medallions. A new vacant property registration program will add another $250,000 to the city?s coffers.

But Fulop, who is running against Healy, called the administration?s budget an election year ploy. Fulop noted that the property revaluation ? or ?reval? ? could have significant consequences for many property owners.

In a reval, all homes in the city are reassessed according to the current market value. Owners of older homes may be paying lower taxes than they should be, so after a reval, they often have to pay more. But in an economy that recently went downhill, owners of newer homes may be paying more than they should be, because they bought the property before its value dropped. Cities are supposed to hold revaluations every 10 years, although most delay them for as long as possible.

The City Council formally introduced the 2013 budget by a vote of 8-0-1, with Fulop abstaining.

Fulop: Beware

Healy and Fulop are the top two contenders running for mayor, although four other people have declared their candidacies: Jerry Walker, Dwayne Baskerville, Cynthia Chandler Johnson, and Abdul Malik.

Fulop said the Healy administration has a history of keeping taxes stable in election years ? then raising them in subsequent years. He points to FY2006 when property owners saw a 19 percent tax increase and FY2010 when a 22.3 percent increase was passed. (The Jersey City budget currently operates on a calendar year. In the years Fulop cites, the city was still operating on a fiscal year.)

The years 2005 and 2009 were election years when Healy ran for mayor.

?In the last two elections when he was running for mayor, Healy kept taxes flat, only to clobber residents with a massive increase after the election,? Fulop said. ?The last time Healy used this smokescreen, people nearly lost their homes. This is just another sad example of Healy putting his own interests ahead of the residents?.?

Fulop further argues that the reval will raise taxes on properties whose values are readjusted upwards.

As a rule of thumb, about a third of property owners will not see a tax increase as a result of the current reval, which was started in 2011. About a third of property owners will actually see their taxes drop slightly from the reval. But another third of property owners will see an increase ? and the increase could be significant.

However the revaluation turns out, the Healy administration has decided that it will not go into effect until the second half of this year ? a move Fulop said was politically motivated.

?The Healy revaluation that he postponed until after the election will kick in [later this year], resulting in even higher taxes,? Fulop said.

However, Healy responded that the City Council ? whose majority is now allied with Fulop ? tried to ?force? the administration to raise taxes.

?We have a $9 million liability for our retirees that goes back more than two decades. We had an opportunity to fund that over five years [through borrowing] with an interest rate of, I think, 1.2 percent, rather than hit the taxpayers with one bill this year,? said Healy. ?The City Council, with Steve Fulop leading the charge, said, ?No, we don?t want to pay this down in five years. You have to do it in three years.? We came back two weeks later with another plan that would have paid this off over the course of three years. Then they said, ?Oh, no, you have to pay it down this year.? The thrust of that whole initiative was to force me to raise taxes this year by adding $9 million to our city budget that we had no need to add.?

Fulop abstained from the budget introduction vote, arguing the council should be given up-to-date appraisal figures for city-owned property the Healy administration plans to sell.

Public hearing later this month

Before the budget is passed by the City Council, there will be a public hearing, which will give residents an opportunity to weigh in on the 2013 municipal spending plan. At present, the public hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, March 13 at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 280 Grove St.

The current budget, as last week, is likely to be amended several times before it is finally passed by the council. In previous years some budget amendments have included slight tax increases that were not included in the original budget that was introduced. If the budget is amended, residents will be given a second opportunity to speak out on the revised spending plan.

http://www.hudsonreporter.com/view/fu ... ndary_stories_left_column

I was assuming that the city adjusted their assessments on a property when a private assessment was made but I guess I could be wrong about that. You would know if your taxes went up after you refinanced. Doesn't surprise me the JC government would drop the ball on that. In my case I bought a converted condo 4 years ago and I'm assessed at full fair value. So when they lower the effective rate to keep the city tax income relatively the same, I will pay less.

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A pattern I've noticed is properties with no sq footage listed, seem to underpay. Hugely.

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I'm afraid you're mistaken about financing appraisals affecting the assessment. Use the tax database and examine any transferred property, the assessment doesn't change. But I have not gotten a satisfactory answer as to how some properties even in the same area end up paying 2 and 3 times others in relative taxes.

http://tax1.co.monmouth.nj.us/cgi-bin ... &out_type=0&district=0906

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I'd prefer to know what was coming instead of the yearly sucker punch in the face and mugging.

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Finally the section in the highest tax bracket will bear the brunt of the city's expenses,

The question is why are taxes going to go up... is it because of mismanagement & patronage or because residents are getting more services and better schools?

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Agreed.

Oh please, both Healy and Fulop are full of it. One way or another they are going to raise taxes. Its inevitable sheeple!

People will pay taxes on what their property in actually worth after years of underpaying, cry me a river. Consider yourself lucky for the years you got away with underpaying your share.
For people who have newer properties downtown that have been appraised recently or if you refinanced and that required an appraisal it is highly likely that you are already paying full-tilt on the value of your property. When the sad-faced deadbeats start paying their fair share your taxes will actually go down.

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You're far too generous. The reval will redistribute the load of who pays. While it will hit downtown hard, there are lots of folks citywide who will get big increases. While the Mayor's tax-abated friends will skate by oblivious.

But with no more elections to worry about, Healy will revert to form and also put in big a tax increase. Just a guess. Just because he did it after his election in 2005 and after his election in 2009 is no guarantee he'll do it again. Right.

The tax increase will be hidden in the reval. The city's ratable value is $5.7 billion and it will probably increase to $17 to $19 billion. The tax rate will drop from $70 plus per thousand to the $20 plus but you won't notice the rate increase because the assessment increased on property. For downtown, taxes will go up.

Jersey City mayor presents budget with no tax hike; rival warns of 'massive increase' next year

By Terrence T. McDonald/The Jersey Journal
on February 25, 2013 at 8:08 PM

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy tonight presented the City Council with a nearly $486 million 2013 budget, one that comes with a $202 million tax levy that is virtually unchanged from last year.

The proposed spending plan budgets more than $165 million on public safety, which accounts for more than a third of the entire budget, and an additional $118 million for pension and insurance costs.

Healy made a brief appearance at the council?s caucus tonight to hand over the budget to the nine-member body, which must approve the plan before it is adopted. Healy noted that this is the third year in a row he?s proposed a budget that doesn?t increase property taxes.

?We continue to streamline operations both in city government and at various city agencies, working with fewer employees and reduced operation costs,? the mayor writes in a letter included with the 73-page budget.

The plan calls for single-digit increases for a host of city departments, with a 5 percent hike slated for the Department of Public Works and a seven percent hike in city funding for three city agencies: the Jersey City Incinerator Authority, the Jersey City Parking Authority and the Jersey City Free Public Library.

The $486 million budget is set to be introduced at the council?s regular meeting on Wednesday. The council will then meet with department heads to ask questions about their individual spending requests, while a final adoption of the budget may not happen until the summer.

The campaign of Ward E Councilman Steve Fulop, who is challenging the mayor in the May 14 mayoral race, said residents can count on a ?massive tax hike? next year.

?In the last two elections when he was running for mayor, Healy kept taxes flat, only to clobber residents with a massive increase after the election,? Fulop said in a statement from his campaign. ?This is just another sad example of Healy putting his own interests ahead of the residents?.?

The tax rate spiked more than 20 percent in 2010, the year after Healy?s last election victory, and it rose roughly 20 percent the year after Healy?s 2005 election win, according to tax documents provided by the city.

City spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill accused Fulop of "cherry picking" years to prove a point, adding that in 2006 Healy was dealing with a "structural deficit he inherited" and in 2010 the city was faced with a $70 million loss in state aid.

"Despite the challenges the mayor has faced, including the global economic recession, he has kept the municipal tax rate stable the past three years," Morrill said, noting that the city has managed to avoid layoffs of police officers and firefighters despite "difficult financial times."

Healy, first elected mayor in a 2004 special election, is seeking his third full term on May 14, when the mayoralty and all nine council seats are up for grabs. In addition to Fulop, Healy may face former high school and college basketball star Jerry Walker, who has announced he is running for the city?s top job.

http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/20 ... nts_bud.html#incart_river