Property-tax reform rally on June 16
BY JANE MEGGITT
Staff Writer

UPPER FREEHOLD — Local residents will help stage the “Jersey Tea Party” on June 16 in Trenton for a common purpose.

The rally, which will take place at 2 p.m., will call for property-tax reform. Deputy Mayor William Miscoski is organizing the bus trip to the state capital.

At the May 19 Township Committee meeting, Miscoski said 35-40 people needed to sign up for the trip in order to rent the bus.

“If there’s not 40 people from Upper Freehold that want to go to a rally to support property-tax reform, it’s sad,” Miscoski said.

According to Cy Thannikary, an Upper Freehold resident and the chairman of Citizens for Property Tax Reform (CPTR), the rally is being sponsored by CPTR, a nonpartisan, statewide coalition of more than 400,000 participants; the AARP, an organization for mature adults ages 50 and over, with more than 1.3 million members in New Jersey; and the New Jersey League of Municipalities, an advocate group for state municipalities, with headquarters in Trenton.

The goal of the rally, Thannikary said, is to demand that the Senate and the state’s acting governor, Richard Codey, support Assembly bill A5269, which calls for a property-tax reform convention. Participants in the rally want the Senate to pass the bill before June 30.

“At this proposed convention, elected delegates will discuss New Jersey’s unfair, oppressive and most hated property-tax system and [will] come up with a solution that will be put to a referendum in 2006,” Thannikary said. “We believe that is the only way we, the people of New Jersey, can achieve true property-tax reform and relieve millions of homeowners from the crippling effect of New Jersey’s unfair property-tax system.”

Thannikary said that for more than 30 years, the state Legislature discussed property-tax reform but “failed to come up with any meaningful solution to this problem, except a rebate here and there.” According to Thannikary, members of the Legislature will have to compromise in order to come up with a lasting solution.

“While the legislators were debating this issue, our property taxes increased by 52 percent from 1993 to 2003,” Thannikary said.

“Last year alone,” Thannikary said, “our property taxes increased by 7.2 percent on average, and there is no end in sight. Yet your income did not increase to that magnitude, which makes it difficult for homeowners to keep up with this ever-increasing tax.

“We simply cannot afford to pay these ever-increasing taxes any longer,” he said.

Although some people argue that a special session of the Legislature would deal with the property-tax problem, Thannikary said that 80 percent of New Jerseyans believe the only way to accomplish long-term property-tax relief is through a convention.

“Democratically elected delegates will discuss this [issue] and come with a set of recommendations that will be put to a referendum where 5.2 million registered voters will vote these recommendations up or down,” Thannikary said. “That is the democratic way.”

The bus will leave from the Cream Ridge Golf Club parking lot on Route 539. For more information, call Miscoski at (609) 758-0698 or visit www.citizens4propertytaxreform.org.