CAI-NJ Sep.2016

However, the legislative history of the Municipal Services Act reflects how deep the underlining roots of the problem are and that its ultimate passage was the obvious result of a political compromise between the competing interests. Left unresolved is the inequity community associa- tions continuing paying double for municipal services. In an early ver- sion of the bill introduced to the Senate on September 19, 1988, the breadth of reimbursable items was much broader than ultimately signed into law. Specifically, in 1989 it was proposed that municipalities provide, or otherwise reimburse, community associations to “maintain and repair water lines, storm sewers and sanitary sewers beneath the roads and streets.” An earlier version of the bill introduced on September 19, 1988 went even further and required municipalities to either reimburse community associations or otherwise maintain both “detention and retention basins, provided such structures [were] used primarily for the controlling of storm water runoff and not for recreational use.” Today, with capital improvements such as water lines, storm and sanitary sew- ers, retention and detention basins and fire hydrants growing older, owners in community associations are asking the same questions that were being asked in the 1980s: “Why should they, as res- idents of a community association who are paying taxes for water lines, storm and sanitary sewers, public retention and detention basins and fire hydrants for others within their municipality, not be reimbursed by their municipality to maintain these items in their communities since they are paying for these very

same public improvements by way of association maintenance fees?” The answer is simple. Municipalities do not want to pay for capital improvements, the maintenance of capital improvements or the replace- ment of capital improvements, if not obligated. The legal issue is whether community associations are being

‘double-taxed’ or not. A more subtle question is “are high density commu- nities with shorter water lines, shorter storm sewer lines and shorter sanitary sewer lines actually overpaying for their municipal services compared to other residents in their municipality who live in less densely developed areas with longer water lines, longer CONT I NU E S ON PAGE 40

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