House left off North Brunswick tax rolls since early 1990s

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House left off North Brunswick tax rolls since early 1990s

By RICHARD KHAVKINE
STAFF WRITER

A Forest Lane lot has been continuously assessed by the township as vacant land even though a sizable home was built on the parcel in or about 1991.
Township officials are combing municipal records in an attempt to determine how the home at 262 Forest could have been left off the assessment rolls. "(The house) hasn't been assessed since it was built,'' the township assessor, Diane Walker, said.While township officials initially thought that no permits of any kind, including construction permits and a certificate of occupancy, were ever issued for the home, those all turned up last week, said Michael Hritz, the township's director of community development."We've determined it did have building permits. ... It was properly inspected through the construction process, and ultimately was issued a certificate of occupancy'' in 1992, Hritz said.Hritz said the error occurred either because an appraiser failed to correctly assess the property or because the certificate of occupancy was never sent to the Tax Assessor's Office.The property owner's name is listed in Middlesex County records as Klein Development Group. According to telephone records, a Ted Klein has lived at 262 Forest since 1992. "It's not something I'm aware of,'' said a person who answered the phone at the house last month and confirmed he was Ted Klein. "It's in the business' name,'' he added before hanging up.Klein has not returned phone messages requesting further comment.The 105-foot-by-412-foot lot is assessed at $72,800. Total taxes owed on the lot in 2007, including those due to the North Brunswick school district and to Middlesex County, were $3,087, according to municipal records.The owners of a similar home, though on a smaller lot, on the quiet cul-de-sac near Church Lane owed $14,908 in taxes in 2007.Following initial inquiries by the Home News Tribune, township officials at first could not find the construction, inspection or occupancy permits and were confounded as to how the home could have remained unassessed for 16 years.But officials then realized that Forest Lane was first named Adams Lane. They searched further and found the permits filed under the Adams Lane address. The house was one of the first two lots developed on that street, Hritz said."It was really a matter of how we were searching for it,'' he said.Walker also said the missing assessment could be tied to a faulty revaluation initiated by the township in the mid 1990s. The fallout from that revaluation led to fraud charges against a New Brunswick-based appraiser, Anthony J. Billings, who later admitted to tampering with public records, turning in assessments of homes that did not exist, and reporting that he inspected houses he never visited, among other misdeeds."(Billings) skipped it over, as far as I can tell,'' said Walker, township assessor since 2002, referring to the untaxed house."It will be assessed in October,'' Walker said of the elegant, roughly, 3,600-square-foot, two-story home. ""As of that time, it will back taxed two years.''Among the things to be determined is how responsible the property owner is for back taxes, given that the required paperwork was filed with the township.Still, Mayor Francis "Mac'' Womack said the township would make a concerted attempt to recoup what it could in back taxes."We've turned it over to authorities to make sure we can recover anything we can‚.‚.‚.‚by law,'' either by way of damages or fines, Womack said. ""We're going to do everything that we can legally.''The township attorney, Ronald Gordon, could not be reached for comment.Womack said that while few details about the matter could be gathered so far, township authorities are looking into whether it is a unique instance. "When we hand it over to the investigative authorities, there are no conditions on what, where and whom. They'll follow the trail wherever it goes,'' Womack said. "It does the raise the question: Is this an isolated situation or part of a potential larger problem, and the burden is on different departments ... to show that this is an isolated incident. We won't assume it isn't until we review our systems and make sure we have no reason to believe there's anything else out there.''All township officials with oversight at the time the house was built, including the assessor and inspection and construction personnel, are no longer with the township, Hritz said.The lack of institutional memory is hampering the township's efforts to find out how the home was never assessed, he said. "The existing professional staff has been researching this with no existing knowledge of this issue,'' Hritz said.