Include Bridgeton in Garden State Growth Zones
By Albert B. Kelly
As I write this, Assembly Bill 5683 is working its way through the State legislature. The bill, sponsored by Assemblywomen Verlina Reynolds-Jackson from District 15 and Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly from District 35, would do a little modifying to New Jersey’s Garden State Growth Zone (GSGZ) property tax exemption program.
If you’re not familiar with the Garden State Growth Zone property tax exemption program, it is a program that exists in Atlantic City, Camden, Passaic, Paterson, and Trenton and development entities within these zones can redevelop property and be granted a 20-year property tax exemption on improvements to that property and they had a 10 year window beginning in 2013 in which to do get a Certificate of Occupancy.
For those of us in resource-poor urbanized communities, the GSGZ program is the “golden ticket” when it comes to revitalization efforts as it incentivizes developers to undertake any number of projects in the designated zone knowing that the on the back end, they will enjoy the benefits of a long term exemption.
The new bill would enable certain other municipalities to newly opt into the GSGZ property tax exemption program within 90 days of the bill being signed into law. The criteria for those seeking to opt in include a Municipal Revitalization Index distress score of at least 75, meeting the criteria for designation as an urban aid municipality in State FY 2019, and which either is subject to financial restrictions imposed pursuant to the "Municipal Stabilization and Recovery Act," or is restricted in its ability to levy property taxes on property because the State owns or controls 25% of the land area or the feds own or control 50 acres in that community.
In the case of Bridgeton, our Municipal Revitalization Index distress score is 84.1 and we did meet the criteria for designation as an urban aid municipality in State FY 2019. However, we come up just a little short in terms of the amount of land area specifically owned or controlled by the State. That said we have a significant amount of our land that is exempt from taxation precisely because it’s publically owned (i.e. municipal, county, state, federal). Throw in land that is exempt for other reasons, and the impact grows.
Bridgeton is the County seat and we host the State’s largest prison. In addition, within our 6.2 square miles, we have a fairly decent amount of land serving as our open space and recreation inventory which hosts our City Park and zoo as well as a number of smaller recreation spots in the community. My point is that just using the metric of land owned or controlled by the State doesn’t ensure that deserving communities would be able to avail themselves of the benefits Garden State Growth Zone property tax exemption program.
No less than 18% of Bridgeton’s parcels are exempt from taxation. The 1,025 parcels with an assessed value of $527,376,400 are more than the remaining parcels whose assessed value is $484,720,575. As pointed out above, a fair number of parcels are owned or controlled by government, but that does not tell the whole story. As the County Seat being surrounded by rural townships hosting primarily farms and land that is part of farmland preservation, Bridgeton is the place where migrant farm labor primarily comes to find housing. By extension, this means we are also the place that is home to more schools, churches, and nonprofit organizations that exist to serve them and they are also exempt.
Throw into the mix all the challenges that come with being a land-locked urbanized community, including the fears, whether real or imagined, that swirl in the minds of some when they contemplate a minority-majority community, and you can guess how revitalization might be hard to come by even though it is something that even those who left years ago claim they want to see.
Also working against our revitalization is the fact that we
become the place for some, if not most, of the “not-in-my-backyard” initiatives
other communities hope to duck whether reentry programs, halfway houses, homeless
initiatives, new jails or whatever.
With all of these challenges in mind, short of including Bridgeton outright as one of the Garden State Growth Zone communities, I would ask lawmakers to consider amending the bill to allow County Seats that meet the Index distress score criteria to qualify for this program as a tool to focus on revitalizing their respective communities.