Hackensack now free to sue hospital that shifts tax burden

Two views of a home being built on North Woodland Street and Booth Avenue in Englewood, above and below, where city officials gave property owner Nader Bolour a permit to remove 109 trees as long as he plants 273 new trees, The Record reported in December 2014.

Bolour, a native of Iran, is owner of the Doris Leslie Blau Gallery of antique carpets and custom-designed rugs in Manhattan.

Editor's note: Subscribers received an e-mail from The Record that "a production issue" may delay delivery of today's paper. This post is based on a story that appears on the paper's Web site.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Hackensack and other towns "may try to levy property taxes against non-profit hospitals now that Governor Christie has vetoed legislation" that would require them to pay a relatively small community service fee, The Record says.

Hackensack University Medical Center and other non-profits that claim exemption from property taxes shift the burden unfairly onto homeowners and businesses -- a story the Woodland Park daily has ignored for years.

Hackensack's assessor has successfully taxed $139 million in HUMC property, yielding about $4,877,000 a year.

But the main hospital complex, an additional $257 million in property that is tax exempt, would yield more than $10 million in revenue for the city, and likely halt the annual increase on other tax payers.

Under the proposed state law, HUMC would have paid the city $690,762 a year -- essentially chump change.

Christie veto

Christie vetoed a bill proposed after "last summer's Tax Court decision that invalidated the property tax exemption enjoyed by non-profit Morristown Medical Center," Washburn reports.

The hospital's parent company, Atlantic Health System, eventually settled, The Record says, "agreeing to pay $15.5 million to satisfy back taxes and interest, and will make future payments of about $1 million a year as tax on the for-profit part of its operation."

Washburn's story makes no reference to HUMC, the biggest non-profit hospital in North Jersey.

Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck, Ridgewood, Wayne and Paterson now are free to repeat Morristown's successful challenge to the non-profit status of the hospital in their community.