Opinion ID: 2287895
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Basis for obligation of municipality to pay into fund.

Text: Each municipality must pay into the intermunicipal account an amount of money calculated by multiplying its apportionment rate (see below) for the comparison year by the amount of dollars by which the aggregate true value [4] assessments of locally taxable real property in the municipality and in the district in that year exceed the aggregate true value assessments of that property in the base year, 1970. N.J.S.A. 13:17-67 (subject to the qualification stated in the next sentence hereof). In the first adjustment year, 1973, this debit is set at 10% of the product of such multiplication, increasing by 4% in each ensuing adjustment year for 10 years, when it will be 50%, that percentage continuing forever thereafter. N.J.S.A. 13:17-67(b). The apportionment rate, for purposes of the foregoing paragraph, is determined by dividing the total property taxes levied by the municipality in the comparison year for local, school, veteran and senior citizen purposes (essentially all local purpose taxes except county purposes) by the aggregate true value of all real property in the municipality as equalized for state school purposes by the Director of the Division of Taxation. N.J.S.A. 13:17-61(g). It is thus apparent that each constituent municipality will have its own apportionment rate struck each year; and further that the theory of the annual surcharge is that any municipality the equalized true value of whose assessed realty in the District increases over that of the base year has benefited from being in the Meadowland District by an assumed accretion in its favor of that number of dollars which would be realized by multiplying the rate at which it taxes property for local (except county) purposes by the stated increase in equalized assessed value of realty in the District. Therefore, so the assumption goes, a charge against the municipality for a portion of that benefit (which will reach 50% thereof in ten years) is rationally related to the purpose of Article 9.