Property Tax Appeals
Dear Berkeley Township,
This is a request for public records made under OPRA and the common law right of access. I certify under penalty of NJSA 2C:28-3 that I have not been convicted of an indictable offense. Please acknowledge receipt of this message.
Records requested:
2016 property tax appeals filed, and disposition of each case.
Yours faithfully,
Jack Roberts
Dear Mr. Roberts,
To clarify for this request (2016 property tax appeals filed, and disposition of each case) are you looking for a spreadsheet listing the requested information will be sufficient. Showing the owner, address, previous assessment, new assessment after appeal, block, lot.
Dear Mr. Roberts,
The Berkeley Township Clerk's Office received your Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request on December 8, 2017. The official Records Custodian, Beverly M. Carle received your OPRA request on the same date. As such, the seven (7) business day deadline to respond to your request is December 18, 2017.
Your OPRA request sought access to the following: 2016 property tax appeals filed, and disposition of each case.
The Tax Assessor office has asked for Clarification on the request please see below:
As with the previous, the within request is voluminous and vague. I would ask for clarification as to the specific document requested. If in fact it is for the entire file to be copied, the requested documents are located in storage. I would estimate approximately 300 file folders containing 5 to 50 separate pieces of letter and legal paper. Complying with this request would require an extraordinary expenditure of time and resources and pursuant to NJSA 47:1A-5(c) I estimate it will take approximately 15 hours to retrieve, review, redact and reproduce each file and/or any single specific document located within same. As such below is an estimated cost to produce this request and the time frame to complete same is 30 days from receipt of deposit.
A. cost of copies 1,500 to 10,000= $360
B. $16.70 per hr x 15 hrs = $250
Dear Karen Stallings,
A similar request was made to another municipality and they readily provided the information.
Your assessors office must have a similar database as the other municipality, instead of denying my request.
Yours sincerely,
Jack Roberts
I will forward your inquiry to the Tax Assessor as I don't have access to their records
After discussions with the Township Attorney and Administrator asking them to intervene on your behalf the response is as follows
"Regardless of the response from another town, our Assessor does not have an electronic data base to pull this information from. As stated on several previous occasions, we would have to have someone go through numerous hard files to pull the documents requested. If you agree that the documents you would want from those files, the requested documents are located in storage. I would estimate approximately 300 file folders containing 5 to 50 separate pieces of letter and legal paper. Complying with this request would require an extraordinary expenditure of time and resources and pursuant to NJSA 47:1A-5(c) I estimate it will take approximately 15 hours to retrieve, review, redact and reproduce each file and/or any single specific document located within same. As such below is an estimated cost to produce this request and the time frame to complete same is 30 days from receipt of a deposit.
A. cost of copies 1,500 to 10,000= $360
B. $16.70 per hr x 15 hrs = $250