JACKSON, NJ – There’s bad news on the horizon for towns with large senior citizen populations like Jackson Township and Toms River. Under the current law in New Jersey, private gated communities and private senior citizen communities such as Holiday City, Westlake, Metedeconk, and Lake Ridge all pay for their own road maintenance costs.
That includes paving, repairs, and snow removal. Under a new law proposed in Trenton, the rest of the community could soon be responsible to pay those costs.
A measure introduced in the New Jersey Senate would require municipalities to reimburse qualified private communities for the cost of paving or repaving their roads, expanding the list of local services towns must provide or fund within those developments.
Senate Bill 502, sponsored by Senator James W. Holzapfel (R–Monmouth and Ocean), amends the 1989 law governing municipal services for qualified private communities. The legislation would add road paving, repaving, and related improvements to the list of services municipalities must either perform directly or reimburse communities for performing themselves.
Under current law, municipalities must provide or reimburse private communities for services such as snow removal, street lighting, and solid waste and recycling collection. Holzapfel’s proposal adds street paving to ensure that residents of private developments, who pay municipal property taxes, receive equitable treatment for essential infrastructure maintenance.
The bill specifies that municipalities are not required to provide services for roads that have not been accepted for public use or that fail to meet local engineering and design standards, except for road width. It also provides for a cap base adjustment in municipal budgets to account for these new reimbursement costs, ensuring compliance with local spending limits.
Holzapfel said the legislation would bring fairness to homeowners in private communities who often face double payments — once through local taxes and again through community association fees — for services typically covered by municipalities.
Under that law, it did not address the legality of a ‘private community’ if the public pays to maintain those roads within.
If enacted, Senate Bill 502 would take effect immediately, requiring local governments to reimburse or provide paving services to qualified private communities across New Jersey.