Because of the state's extended budget process, tax bill mailings have been delayed in recent years
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Municipalities throughout New Jersey are again having to contend with late notifications of state aid numbers, delaying tax collections from residents, slowing cash flow sometimes to a trickle and, in many cases, further burdening already depleted budgets.
Although state lawmakers and Gov. Chris Christie met their constitutionally imposed July 1 budget deadline, a last-minute allocation of aid to school districts meant it took the state’s number-crunchers several weeks to determine which towns would receive how much.
"We did not know until July 21," said William Dressel, executive director of the New Jersey State League of Municipalities. "It’s a domino effect that creates major problems at the local level."
Because of the delay, many towns have just mailed out tax bills for the third and fourth quarters of this year and the first half of next — several weeks after the June 14 mandated deadline.
Treasury officials did not return calls for comment.
With property taxes accounting for anywhere from 48 percent to 55 percent of a municipality’s revenue, according to East Brunswick Finance Director L. Mason Neely, local officials are sweating it out as the due dates of two of their biggest outlays — to school districts and their county — approach.
"If you lose 50 percent of your revenue, your cash flow for a month, it’s a lot of money," Neely said.
He criticized lawmakers in Trenton for their indifference to towns which, he said, are sometimes obliged to estimate tax bills to keep from going cash dry. In East Brunswick, that estimated bill went out in May.
That means the township must now mail out reconciliation tax bills at the end of the year, which Neely said was a redundant expense.
"In our case, that’s an extra $6,000," he said. "Take that and multiply it times 560 municipalities around the state. That’s astronomical. They’re costing towns millions of dollars just in extra mailing costs because they don’t give information out."
Michael Campbell, the tax collector in Jackson Township, said his town used to regularly meet the June 14 deadline for mailing out tax bills.
But because of the state’s extended budget process, those mailings have been delayed in recent years. Like many municipalities, Jackson didn’t send out this year’s third and fourth quarter bills until this week. A grace period will give Jackson residents until Aug. 26 to pay their bills.
The township, though, has just a few days to meet two of its own biggest bills — a $6.4 million payment to the school district and $6 million outlay to Ocean County.
Campbell said township officials decided against sending out estimated bills to save Jackson’s 20,000 taxpayers money and because they were relatively confident they could meet the township’s obligations.
Depending on how much tax revenue flows through the tax office in the next few days, Campbell is still hopeful.
"We had a line out the door today," of people paying their tax bills, he said. "It’s nice to get that kind of response from the taxpayers. That generates some of the cash for us to pay at least some of the bills."
Dressel said municipalities should not have to gamble with such large sums on a tight timeline.
Assuming the state budget is done in a timely manner, he said, third-quarter bills typically start showing up in residents’ mailboxes by mid-July, at the latest, and the vast majority of those bills would be paid by now.
Dressel blames politics.
"This has happened over the years, where political decisions are being made and those decisions are made at the last minute because they are controversial," he said. "We’re basically being held hostage by these political maneuvers."