Tax bill for open space irks coalition

Thursday, October 9, 2003
By JAN BARRY
STAFF WRITER


RINGWOOD - Rumors of politics and phone calls to state agencies are flying as a land-preservation group finds itself faced with a tax sale of an environmentally sensitive mountain tract it had bought to preserve.

At issue is a tax bill for more than $65,000 on property above the Wanaque Reservoir. The Basking Ridge-based Passaic River Coalition maintains it doesn't owe any extra taxes because of a 1999 change in state law exempting non-profit-owned conservation lands from paying increased taxes for property that was previously assessed as farmland.

"There are rumors we want to try to get it back and sell it for development," Mayor Jerry Holt said Wednesday of the 302-acre Tory Estates tract on a steep ridge west of the Wanaque Reservoir, bought from a developer in 2001. In fact, Holt said, he acted to remove the property from the tax sale list, "so it wasn't in jeopardy."

As farmland, which includes forests where timber is sold, taxes for the Tory tract were $1,632.48 in 2001, according to Tax Collector Gail Bado.

The disputed bill is for the difference in taxation as open space in a residential zone for two years, plus interest, she said.

Holt said that once the facts are laid out, he believes the Borough Council will waive the disputed back taxes.

But in a political season when four council seats are being hotly contested, questions about the tax sale listing persist.

At a recent council meeting, the governing body's lone Democrat, Wenke Taule, claimed that the Republican majority appeared to be "trying to sabotage the Passaic River Coalition" because its land-trust director, Bill O'Hearn, is a Democratic council candidate.

Holt maintains that politics had nothing to do with the decision by Bado to put the property on the tax sale list. That decision was triggered by a determination by the tax assessor, Rose Farrell, that so-called "roll-back" taxes were owed because the tract was in a farmland assessment status when the Passaic River Coalition bought it in 2001.

Bado and Farrell consulted with state officials on how to handle this situation, Holt said.

Farrell said this week that the Passaic River Coalition didn't file paperwork to claim an exemption or appeal to the Passaic County Board of Taxation by a deadline. The organization has since filed the required documents and is now exempt, she said

"It gets confusing," Farrell said.

But O'Hearn and his colleagues at the Passaic River Coalition are skeptical.

"We think it's a bogus case," he said. He said numerous letters were sent to borough officials last year contesting a steady stream of tax bills.

Ella Filippone, the non-profit group's executive director, said Wednesday that a lawyer has filed an appeal in state court.

"This is a situation where the law is very clear. I don't understand why we are in this," she said.

The tract was purchased with the aid of state Green Acres funds and comes under a 1999 state law applying to such situations, she said.

"We paid taxes to Ringwood for a year and a quarter, then the state paid in-lieu-of taxes. So they are getting paid property taxes based on whatever appraisal the state has done," Filippone said.

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