Middletown Terminates Contract with Realty Data Services

Middletown, NJ- The Middletown Township Committee voted unanimously Monday night to terminate its contract with Realty Data Services, LLC, the Shrewsbury based company which performs inspections and data collection for most Monmouth County towns under the pilot Assessment Demonstration Program (ADP).

The ADP has been the subject of controversy in recent weeks due to an exposé by The Asbury Park Press which outlined possible ethics violations and conflicts of interests between Realty Data Services, their vendors, and the administration of the Monmouth County Tax Board.

Middletown will manage the state-mandated tax assessments and inspection program internally.

“We’ve seen the program in operation for a year now. With all the questions that have been raised, we feel there would be greater accountability and a cost savings if we took the service in-house,” said Mayor Stephanie Murray. “We also believe we can provide a more comprehensive service to our residents.”

Deputy Mayor Steve Massell said that Middletown doing it’s assessments and inspections in house will save the Township’s taxpayers money, and ultimately create savings for residents of neighboring towns. “Once we have a year of doing this work ourselves under our belt, we’ll be able to offer the service to other communities as a share services agreement, ” Massell said.

“Given the allegations against RDS and given our ability to do the job ourselves, it makes perfect sense for us to manage this program internally,” said Committeeman Tony Fiore.