STONE HARBOR – The Borough Council is considering undertaking a reassessment of all properties in town.

Jennifer Gensemer, chair of the council’s Committee on Administration and Finance, said at the council’s Sept. 2 meeting that her committee was “beginning to discuss if a formal reassessment may be warranted in the near future.”

Council member Ken Biddick, an accountant by training, put the matter more forcefully: “We aren’t going to dilly-dally” about it, “we are going to do it.”

Stone Harbor would be the second county town to do a reassessment, following neighboring North Wildwood, where notices were sent to property owners in July.

The word reassessment carries with it connotations of rapidly increasing property taxes, but Biddick called this one of the major misconceptions associated with reassessment.

He said that doing a reassessment across the borough would not raise the overall tax levy because the tax rate would adjust downward to maintain a balance with what the council has set as the necessary tax amount for operating the borough. He even said at one point, “You will not pay more,” apparently referring to the town as a whole.

In a reassessment, properties are assessed at their real value rather than at a value that may have been fair market value at the point of the previous assessment. Currently Stone Harbor’s total assessed value of all real estate is certified by the county tax board at $5.1 billion, but the tax board lists the true market value of that same real estate at $9.5 billion.

The ratio of assessed value to true value, as Biddick noted, sits at 53.3%. The disconnect between assessed and true value creates an unfair distribution of the borough’s tax burden, with some paying more than they should and others paying less than they should.

Both Gensemer and council member Bernadette “Bunny” Parzych stressed the need to bring the tax burden back in line with real property values and ensure a fair distribution of that burden.

For Biddick there was another part to the reassessment agenda. He described the way in which new valuations, essentially assessments on new construction, play into the budget process and help with raising the appropriation cap that has bedeviled the borough for the last couple of years and that promises again to be a difficulty in the 2026 budget process. Raising the appropriations cap is an important goal for Biddick in the overall assessment process.

Mayor Tim Carney was not convinced and wanted a fuller explanation of how the reassessment process could alleviate some of the constraints imposed by the appropriations cap. For Carney the concern was whether the process was opening a door to new taxes.

Anything that raises the levy cap because of new construction and then raises the spending or appropriation cap, allowing an increase in spending, can, at the council’s discretion, open the door to an increase in the local purpose tax rate. The reassessment process does not directly lead to such an increase overall, but it does increase the borough’s capacity to increase both taxes and spending if the governing body chooses to do so.

Biddick promised a presentation at the next council meeting to illustrate how the reassessment process would impact future budget caps. Since such a process takes one to two years to complete, nothing the council does with reassessments would affect the 2026 budget process.

Concerning that budget process, Gensemer said the borough is looking at options for employee health plans that would allow the town to leave the state plan and avoid projected premium increases in 2026 that she said will be between 30% and 40%.

She said the borough expects to have the information for a discussion of health plan options in advance of the October open enrollment process. If the borough were to leave the state plan it would be joining five other county municipalities that have taken that step.

Gensemer also said the council would be considering new revenue sources, noting that it has a report from the Stone Harbor Property Owners Association about the association’s research into revenue options.

Contact the reporter, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com