Tax Court: City of Newark v. Twp. of Jefferson, Docket Nos. 006324-2016, 007392-2015, 007399-2015, 007940-2014, 007937-2014; City of Newark c / o NWCDC v.Twp.of Jefferson, Docket Nos.006324 - 2016,007392 - 2015; City of Newark c / o Newark Watershed Corp.v.Twp.of Jefferson,Docket Nos.005970 - 2012, 005969 - 2012; City of Newark c/o Newark Watershed v.Twp.of Jefferson, Docket Nos.005555 - 2011, 008214 - 2010, 008215 - 2010; Newark Watershed Corp.v.Twp.of Jefferson;Docket Nos.013604 - 2009, 013606 - 2009, 013601 - 2009;opinion by Bianco, J.T.C., decided October 3, 2019. For plaintiff– Philip Elberg(Medvin & Elberg, attorneys);for defendants - Lawrence P.Cohen(Lavery, Selvaggi, Abromitis & Cohen, P.C., attorneys).
Held: The court affirmed the assessments of the subject property, awatershed, rejecting both the plaintiff’ s and defendant’s expert appraisers’ respective conclusions of value under the Sales Comparison Approach.The court also rejected plaintiff’ s expert appraiser’s conclusion that the highest and best use of the subject property was timber harvesting as unsupported since the expert appraiser could not find one sale of land in New Jersey that was soldfor timbering purposes.Plaintiff’ s expert appraiser further failedto show comparability between the heavily wooded and deed - restrictedsubject property in northern New Jersey and proposed comparable sales of deed - restricted farmland in southern New Jersey.The court alsorejected defendant’ s expert appraiser’ s proposed comparable sales of deed - restricted properties to not - for -profit corporations and public entities, given that he made no adjustments for the differences in the restrictions between those proposed comparables and the subject property.