If you have questions about the town-wide revaluation that is now underway, you should plan on attending a presentation on the reval that will be held this Wednesday, February 21, at 6:30 p.m. in the Verona Community Center Ballroom at 880 Bloomfield Avenue. Verona officials and representatives of Professional Property Appraisers, the company carrying out the home inspections for the reval, will be there to talk about why the reval is being done and explain the process.
The Essex County Board of Taxation ordered Verona in April 2017 to conduct a revaluation to bring all properties in town up to fair market value. The Board told the town then that the ratio of assessed value to true value in Verona was 85.01%, and that there was a wide divergence in ratios, ranging from 49.81% to 122.82%. In simple terms, that means that some Verona properties have been assessed at well below their fair market value, and some are over it.
Verona’s ratio of assessed value to true value at the start of this reval is, however, at a much better point than it was in 2009, the last time the entire town was revalued. At that time, Verona hadn’t had a reval in three decades and our ratio was 19.68%, according to data from Verona’s chief financial officer, Matthew Laracy. Since the 2009 reval, Verona’s ratio has been as high as 93.54%. Montclair currently has the lowest ratio in Essex County, at 80.75%.
Councilman Alex Roman had a fairly concise explanation of the impact of a revaluation at the January 22 Town Council meeting. “To the town it is revenue neutral,” he said, “it doesn’t cause us to collect any more or less revenue, we just spread it out differently. It just changes the distribution of who pays for it.” You can watch his full explanation here.
