{"id":19793,"date":"2022-04-07T02:58:26","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T06:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=19793"},"modified":"2022-04-07T02:59:54","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T06:59:54","slug":"ocean-county-tax-rate-to-drop-in-2022-as-sandy-ratables-fully-restored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2022\/04\/ocean-county-tax-rate-to-drop-in-2022-as-sandy-ratables-fully-restored\/","title":{"rendered":"Ocean County Tax Rate to Drop in 2022 As Sandy-Soaked Ratables Fully Restored"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Ocean County Commissioners discuss the county budget, April 2022. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

It took a more than a decade to recover from the 2008 financial recession, but with the county\u2019s ratable base now having surpassed its previous high before the 2008 recession \u2013 compounded by Superstorm Sandy in 2012 \u2013 officials said they would keep a promise to lower the property tax rate as property values increased.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the Ocean County Commissioners on Wednesday adopted their 2022 spending plan, which calls for a 1-cent decrease in the tax rate, to 32.2 cents per $100 of assessed real estate value. This year\u2019s rate will be the lowest in nine years, and the sixth consecutive year that the rate has decreased. The ultimate impact of the decrease will be felt differently among county residents depending on the value of their homes and the towns in which they reside. County tax bills are subject a series of complex equalization tables, but the 1-cent decrease will be reflected regardless.<\/p>\n

The 2022 totals $479,916,286, up $9.5 million from last year, though that figure takes into account federal coronavirus relief grants and similar measures taken in as revenue. The budget will be supported by a $387,360,543 tax levy. The county will spend $51,542,490 on capital improvements and maintain a $38.5 million surplus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not only a \u2018this year\u2019 but, it\u2019s a budget that looks into the future,\u201d said Commissioner Bobbi Jo Crea. \u201cThis was a good year, but we have to look to the future. Nobody expected to be hit by Superstorm Sandy, or any of the things that happened in the past couple of years. I\u2019m glad we have something that looks forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

The county has completely recovered its ratable base from the 2008 economic downturn and the Oct. 29, 2012 landfall of Superstorm Sandy. The collective value of the county\u2019s property is $120,298,414,009, which just eclipses the pre-recession and pre-Sandy highs. While under state law the county could have maintained higher tax rates despite the increase in property values, the commissioners, then led by the late budget chair Freeholder John Bartlett, staunchly promised they would not use the storm to increase taxes over time. The budgeting since Sandy has led to the county maintaining its \u2018AAA\u2019 bond rating, which this year will allow the county to shave $2 million off the books through refunding debt at lower interest rates.<\/p>\n

The budget is \u201cas conservative as it can possibly be, keeping in mind that there are many aspects of the community we have to serve,\u201d said Commissioner Gary Quinn. \u201cIt\u2019s not just the Board of Commissioners, it\u2019s the entire team here.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s spending plan includes appropriations of $16.6 million for Ocean County College and $20.7 million for the county\u2019s vocational-technical school district. It also maintains the county\u2019s unified Tourism and Business Development office and its unique Consumer Affairs office, which handles more cases than all of the state\u2019s other counties combined.<\/p>\n

Anticipated capital projects include annual road maintenance and repaving, construction of a new library in Stafford Township, additions and improvements to the OCVTS school in Jackson Township, a new phase of the reconstruction of East County Line Road in Lakewood, and the replacement of the Duck Farm Bridge<\/a> in Brick Township.<\/p>\n

The five commissioners voted unanimously voted in favor of the budget. No members of the public offered any comment. The commissioners agreed that by keeping the tax rate stable and utilizing a \u201cpay as you grow\u201d strategy of updating infrastructure, the county will be able to handle a future recession of natural disaster \u2013 a legitimate fear considering the sky-high value of real estate in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had a real boom in real estate in Ocean County over the past couple of years with Covid, but we have to prepare for, eventually, things coming back to Earth,\u201d Quinn said.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It took a more than a decade to recover from the 2008 financial recession, but with the county\u2019s ratable base now having surpassed its previous high before the 2008 recession \u2013 compounded by Superstorm Sandy in 2012 \u2013 officials said they would keep a promise to lower the property tax rate as property values increased. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[4630,24,4484,1592],"class_list":["post-19793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ocean-county","tag-2022-county-budget","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-featured","tag-ocean-county"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/ocean_county_commissioners_2022_374-scaled.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-59f","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}