Dorothy Philbin | CNBNews
A few days ago Clearysnotebook printed a column about the number of out-of-town landlords and the effect these owners and their properties have on the city. There were addresses provided by the city's Custodian of Records. Many of the landlords' names were redacted with a big black line hiding the owners' names.
The redaction is amusing if you have any computer skills at all. Property owners, city employees and salaries, city retirees and pension amount, even Postal Service employees are paid with your tax dollars and you have the right to know.
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Datauniverse.com* is where you will find all this information. The data site also provides the average property value ($107,898) and the average property tax ($5,025) for Gloucester City.
The average property value looks about right but there is something that just doesn't feel right about the average property tax. If you do the math, you will find that the property tax is reported to be .0465% of the home's value. That just doesn't seem high enough.
There was one zip code which appeared several times (08618.) That zip code belongs to the Trenton area. Just one address will lead to all the rest. In short, the NJ State Department of Transportation owns nine properties in our city with values ranging from $287,300 to $29,500. In total these nine properties have a value of $651,900. That's the good news. The bad news is that the State of New Jersey pays no property taxes. That amounts to a little short of $30,360 in lost tax revenue at the "official rate."
Stay tuned. Let's see how much the city loses in tax revenue on the properties they own, other than official properties (fire house, police station, etc.) Films at 11.
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