Join the club...

I did, back in '04. Appealed my assessment in 2010 and the township agreed to reduce it. Now my taxes are back to where they were before the reduction thanks to their manipulating the new tax rate. Very clever.

I got hammered also, 11% here. Do we really have to wait till April 1st to appeal or will the tax assessor get involved sooner?

I'm pretty sure that you'll have to wait until April of next year. Note that the new assessment is now based on the full appraised value of the property. In the past the
assessment was based on a formula (in my case) of 55% of assessed value. But the township cleverly manipulated the new tax rate on the full assessment so that I'm paying 10 1/2% higher taxes than I did last year. In my case the new tax rate would have to be 1.87% of the full assessment to be the same as it was last year. (The old rate was 3.406% of the 55% formula). So the township lowered the tax rate, but because it's based on the full assessed property value, it's actually a major increase. Way over the 2% cap. How's that for a rip off!

Thanks for that response. I don't understand why the govenor signs a 2% cap and Montville can do what it wants. My bill is much higher than 2%, and the law says 2%. I don't care what the behind the scene manipulations are, the bottom line is that I'm paying more than 2%. Isn't that the intent of the govenors new law? More research is needed.

Welcome to the world of Politics. The Govenors 2 percent is on spending not a cap on taxes. School Boards are limited to I believe 2 1/2 percent of spending and in fact they were well under that here in Montville . Cuts in aid to municipal governments and Schools are still lower than it was when he came into office so more of the expenses have to come out of the more or less stable ratable base. On top of that we had a reval this year which is an arcane way of equalizing the taxes accrost the county to make sure all residents are paying the same rate no matter where they live. Now he wants cuts in income taxes which if you compare what you spend in property taxes is of benefit only if you are at the highest level. This is the same shell game the Whitman Administration played which began the dramatic rise in property taxes. There is much to blame local Government for and I would love to but this is the result of the Governors rhetoric about property tax relief and the false expectations he created.

I feel metaphorically raped and unable to punish my attacker. Seems that local government has no sense of ethics, and can get away with ripping off their constituents at will.