By Chelsea Conaboy, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Mar. 7--Gordon and Donna Brown moved from New York to Camden County in 2006 looking for a place to raise their two children. They found it in a $643,000 house on a Lawnside cul-de-sac.
Four years later, their River Run neighborhood and the adjacent Lions Gate are suffering, with houses languishing on the market or headed toward foreclosure.
The recession has hit hard. But Gordon Brown says another pest is eating away at this once-prosperous section of town: property taxes.
The new houses are assessed closer to market value than older ones, which means they bear a bigger tax burden. Residents, who live in the state with the nation's highest property taxes, have been clamoring for relief in the form of revaluation for nearly two years.
It may be on the way. Just maybe.
The Camden County Board of Taxation issued an order in May saying the town's tax structure was unfair and requiring Lawnside to conduct a revaluation by Sept. 30 this year. But the Browns and their neighbors who regularly attend Borough Council meetings say little progress has been made.
No one has been picked to do the revaluation, and the council said it needed at least six months to digitize borough maps before doing a revaluation, they said.
"There's a dragging of the feet here," said Brown, an on-floor surveillance manager for the New York Stock Exchange who paid $18,800 in property taxes last year.
No Lawnside officials would comment on the revaluation.
Mayor Mark K. Bryant wrote in an e-mail that ballooning mortgages or job loss -- not taxes -- were to blame for financial hardship in the two neighborhoods.
He said the tax rate had been stable in recent years. The rate was $4.52 per $100 of assessed value in 2009, up from $4.48 in 2008.
Bryant would answer no further questions. Nor did Councilwoman Mary Ann Wardlow, who chairs the finance committee. Tax assessor Thomas J. Colavecchio said he had been directed not to speak to The Inquirer.
Lawnside is one of Camden County's smallest communities. With about 1,100 homes, there are too few sales to accurately account for changes in real estate values, said lawyer Gregory B. Montgomery, who represents the homeowners' association.
Some older houses are assessed at less than half their accrued market value. A revaluation could raise taxes for those homeowners. Some borough officials may want to see it delayed for that reason, Montgomery said.
Brown's home is assessed at $416,500, about 65 percent of its 2006 market value. But a comparable four-bedroom house on the next street, assessed at $423,900, is listed for sale at $324,900 and dropping.
The home belongs to Gregory Luma, a family physician with a practice in Wenonah who moved from Brooklyn, N.Y., in 2007 to buy his first house. He faces foreclosure if it does not sell.
Luma has refinanced his mortgage and lowered his monthly payments to a manageable level. Taxes, $19,000 last year, make the house unmanageable, he said.
A few buyers have shown interest in the property during its five months on the market. When they see the tax bill, he said, "they bolt."
He and others from the neighborhood who gathered in the Browns' kitchen last weekend to vent frustration, said the borough had not answered their questions. For starters: When will the revaluation be complete?
"It makes it look like they're hiding something," Montgomery said. "They may not be. . . . It would be better if they just said, 'I don't know.' "
The group said borough officials were dismissive of their concerns and treated them as outsiders. Others in Lawnside show little sympathy.
"They came in, and they bought those expensive homes, and they should be taxed accordingly," said Wilbert Buie, a retired engineer from the older Warwick Hills neighborhood.
Buie, who spoke as he and his granddaughter worked on her car in the driveway of the house where he has lived for 40 years, said that revaluation might push his taxes up but that he doubted it could bring anybody's tax bills down.
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Contact staff writer Chelsea Conaboy at 856-779-3893 or cconaboy@phillynews.com.
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