Agency official: Somerset County uses annual reassessments; five towns ordered to comply

An agency official told meeting participants that Somerset County has 16 of its 21 towns in an annual reassessment program and that five towns that do not participate have recently been ordered by the state and county to carry out annual reassessments.

The official said the county is often cited "across the state on how to assess properly" because of its large share of towns in the annual program. The official added that the five towns flagged for orders, including Montgomery, showed declines in their assessment-to-true-value ratios and increases in measures of nonuniformity, prompting state and county action.

Why it matters: the official framed reassessments as a mechanism to preserve uniformity and equity. "Because we have so many towns that are in that program, we are the number 1 county within the entire state of New Jersey, ranked by efficiency and uniformity and, what we call the director ratio," the official said. That characterization was stated by the official during the meeting and was not independently verified in the transcript.

The official said compliance orders followed technical measures — the ratio of assessment to true value and a coefficient of deviation — and occur when uniformity standards "start to waiver" in a town. The meeting did not record any formal vote or statute citation backing the orders; the official described the state and county actions as the basis for requiring the towns to move to annual reassessment.