{"id":1904,"date":"2016-05-19T01:14:16","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T05:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/?p=1904"},"modified":"2016-05-19T01:14:16","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T05:14:16","slug":"four-years-after-sandy-seaside-heights-tax-base-has-yet-to-recover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/2016\/05\/four-years-after-sandy-seaside-heights-tax-base-has-yet-to-recover\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Years After Sandy, Seaside Heights Tax Base Has Yet to Recover"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The entrance to Seaside Heights from the north. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

The boardwalk has been long rebuilt and the \u201cStronger Than the Storm\u201d commercial campaign is long over, but Seaside Heights\u2019 tax base is worse off than ever nearly four years after Superstorm Sandy struck the barrier island community.<\/p>\n

In what may be the worst-kept, yet oft-hushed secret in New Jersey, the Shore\u2019s tax base has struggled to recover in the face of government funding delays, insurance scandals and dwindling federal and state aid to go toward rebuilding projects. Add in a boardwalk fire that wiped out more than a block of oceanfront ratables, plus a slew of tax appeals, and Seaside Heights its largest budgetary hurdle in history.<\/p>\n

Without a last-minute decision on the part of the federal government to release a fourth round of essential services grants \u2013 storm recovery dollars aimed at bridging the fiscal gap created due to a loss of ratables \u2013 or a state transitional aid allotment, the borough\u2019s residents would face an 11.65 percent tax increase on the municipal portion of their tax bills, about $233 for the owner of a property worth $222,000, the borough\u2019s average.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to introduce a budget that pretends\u00a0[aid]\u00a0not going to be there, and there is a risk it\u2019s not going to be there,\u201d said Borough Administrator Christopher Vaz.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A home on Hiering Avenue in Seaside Heights, never repaired after Sandy, is slated for demolition. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

A representative from\u00a0Oliwa & Co., the borough\u2019s auditor, said the borough\u2019s problems aren\u2019t on the spending end \u2013 $200,000 in spending has been cut from this year\u2019s proposed budget \u2013 but, rather, the tax base\u2019s continued decline.<\/p>\n

Seaside Heights\u2019 tax base continued to decline over the past year. Its 2016 tax base sits at\u00a0$633,423,000, down $7.4 million from last year. Pre-Sandy, the borough\u2019s ratable base was valued at $855 million. The lack of tax revenue generated from the lower assessments means the costs of running the town must be absorbed by those who remain in their homes and businesses.<\/p>\n

Vaz said it will take at least another month before the borough finds out if federal aid was allocated or emergency state transitional aid was allowed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state is still waiting for HUD to determine if they\u2019re going to go\u00a0another year\u201d with Sandy aid, he said.<\/p>\n

According to Vaz, the borough\u2019s portion of the Funtown Pier complex \u2013 destroyed in the Sept. 2013 boardwalk fire \u2013 is one of the largest drivers of the declining ratable base, followed by tax appeals the borough is still paying going back even before the storm. The assessments on all residents\u2019 properties were lowered following Sandy, and many have yet to recover.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless you\u2019re improving the property and coming in for construction permits, your assessment isn\u2019t going up, and we\u2019re not generating that revenue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mayor Anthony Vaz said for the municipal government\u2019s part, the borough has done everything it could to reign in spending as it tries to lure new investors to redevelop the Boulevard business district<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have to root for is the rebuilding of our community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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

The boardwalk has been long rebuilt and the \u201cStronger Than the Storm\u201d commercial campaign is long over, but Seaside Heights\u2019 tax base is worse off than ever nearly four years after Superstorm Sandy struck the barrier island community. In what may be the worst-kept, yet oft-hushed secret in New Jersey, the Shore\u2019s tax base has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[18,6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-seaside-government","category-seaside-heights"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/seaside_heights_welcome_sign.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgsn9q-uI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}