ATLANTIC CITY — After years of costly tax appeals and the resulting removal of casino properties from the city’s ratable base, the mayor said a recently completed citywide revaluation could represent the low point of the resort’s value.
The full scope of the citywide revaluation — which was ordered by the Atlantic County Board of Taxation last year — and its impact on property tax bills won’t be known until the city approves its budget this summer and a rate is set, Mayor Marty Small Sr. said.
Neither the city nor the company that performed the assessment provided an exact figure of the city’s total valuation following the completed work. But both estimated the figure to be comparable to last year, when the city’s total ratable base was roughly $2.52 billion.
“I believe the ratable base is at rock bottom today,” Small said Tuesday during a news conference at City Hall. “We can only go up from here.”
With a special election scheduled for the end of the month where voters will decide whether to change the city’s form of government, Small said “the timing couldn’t be worse,” fearing proponents of the change would use the projected tax increases for some property owners to highlight the city’s inability to “manage itself.”
“I understand that people are upset, and they should be,” said Small, who noted the valuation of one of his properties went up and the other went down. “But just understand that it is the process and the (city) government didn’t raise or lower your property values. ... Any fair-minded person would know (that) no matter who the mayor is, no matter who City Council is, those numbers were going to be the numbers.”
In the meantime, property owners can schedule a meeting with the company that performed the revaluation, Professional Property Appraisers, to dispute the new assessment. The deadline for tax appeals has been extended to May 1 because of the revaluation, according to the county.
The mayor hinted at an impending announcement of a development project in the South Inlet that would involve “400-plus homes (on) vacant beachfront.”
New commercial and residential development would increase the city’s ratable base and, hopefully, offset any property tax increases.
Atlantic City’s ratable base has declined significantly since 2010, when it was just shy of $20.5 billion. Five years later, after four casinos closed, the figure was $7.3 billion. After all the casino properties were removed from the valuation in 2017 because of payment-in-lieu-of-taxes legislation, the number dropped to $3.1 billion.
The amount of exempt property valuation jumped from $4.7 billion in 2016 to $7.9 billion the following year.
The reduction in the city’s ratable base, combined with a dearth of new revenue streams, has left many property owners in the city paying higher taxes.
The Atlantic City Taxpayers Association, a nonprofit created in 2019 to address the rising cost of property ownership in the city, responded to the revaluation notices, saying the group “vigorously objects” to the increased financial burden.
The state, which has direct fiscal oversight of Atlantic City following the 2016 takeover legislation, is the subject of much of the group’s ire, particularly as the municipal debt has increased, public services have decreased and property tax relief is rarely discussed.
“There needs to be a public sense of outrage and a demand for accountability” said Taxpayers Association Legal Chairman Tom Forkin.
Small said the city’s taxpayers remain the administration’s top priority.
“My administration is working with the state’s budget team, and we have a goal to deliver the residents of Atlantic City a tax decrease, or, at bare minimum, a flat tax,” he said Tuesday.
The 2019 assessment was the first in Atlantic City since 2008 and only the second in the past 40 years.
City Council awarded PPA a contract for $1.14 million in May 2019 to conduct the revaluation.
The state Division of Taxation and county Board of Taxation approved the revaluation, according to the state Department of Community Affairs.
