Residential Taxed: Includes homes approved and under construction. Also includes "Common Areas" belonging to Homeowners Associations
Residences in other categories: Multi-family rentals ("garden apartments") taxed in commercial categories, Farm houses, Incidental residences on commercial properties
Residential Exempt: Lounsberry Meadows, Disabled Veterans, Parsonages, Life-Rights homes in the GSNWR.
Residential Total: Please note that this is the total for Residential PROPERTIES, not HOUSING UNITS. A Garden Apartment complex is counted as ONE PROPERTY, but may have 30 HOUSING UNITS.
Commercial and Industrial: Excluding vacant lots and multi-family rental complexes.
Power company substations and NJ Transit: Power company transformer substations (i.e. fenced-in properties - Unfenced power and pipeline rights-of-way are listed under Open Space). NJ Transit includes trackage, station buildings and parking lots
Long Hill Township Buildings: Old and new Town Hall, Police, Library, Public Works and Wastewater Treatment Plant, and various sewage pumping stations.
Social and Service: Fire Companies, First Aid Squad, Community Center, Senior Citizens Center, Grange, American Legion.
Religious and Charitable: Church building properties, Shrine and Raptor Trust. Excludes church-owned vacant parcels and parsonages.
Town and County Roads (est): Guesstimate. Road right-of-way is not assigned a block and lot, is not assessed and is completely omitted from the assessment acreage totals. Assign 75 miles times 50 ft. ROW = 457 acres. See the notes at USA-Exempt, Passaic River and Total Acreage below.
Private Vacant Land: Classed as residential or commercial. Excludes utility rights of way and exempt-religious. Excludes residential vacant lots approved for development or currently under construction.
Farms: Excludes farmhouses, which are listed above under Developed/Residential/Other. Some farm properties are enrolled in "Farm Preservation" and would be excluded from further development. Others are not enrolled
Power and Pipe Lines Right of Way: All lots owned by PSEG/GPU/Transcontinental with no buildings. The substations are included with Taxed Commercial above. This line includes rights of way that are owned by the utility companies and are taxed. Some of the utility company rights of way are easements (typically, across county and state open space parcels). These easements have no identity in the tax records, and can not be identified in this analysis.
Exempt - Religious and Cemetery: Church-owned property with no buildings, and all cemeteries.
Long Hill Parks: Hicks' Tract, Matthew G. Kantor Park, Meyersville Field, Long Hill Baseball Softball Fields (LHBSA), Stirling Lake, Turtle Rock Park, and the parking lots that go with these properties.
Long Hill other Open Space: Random lots. A few are prime space reserved as part of "density modified" developments. Most are wetland, flood plain, small slivers protecting drainage ditches and brooks
USA GSNWR (partially est.): After some of the missing acreage was assigned to Roadways and Passaic River, there are still 86 acres missing. Assigned to the GSNWR, because there are probably some incorrect records which just have not been cleaned up.
The Passaic River (est): Guesstimate. The township boundary extends to the river center-line, but the lots which abut the river are measured to the river bank. Half the width of the river is in the town, but is not assigned a block and lot, is not assessed and is completely omitted from the assessment acreage totals. Assign 12.4 miles times 40 ft. = 60 acres. See the notes at USA-Exempt and Streets/Roads above, and Total Acreage below.
Township Total Acreage: The New Jersey state Geographic Information System (GIS) reports that Long Hill Township contains 7767 acres (12.14 square miles). Other references claim 12.08 sq. mi. or 7731 acres (US Census, etc.). We will trust the GIS number. The sum total of the Reassessment property listing is 7154 acres. 613 acres are apparently lost. Some must be streets and roads. Some is in the Passaic River. The rest is probably records errors in the Great Swamp. I estimated acreage for these three categories to make the components add up to the known Total, and to make the percentages come out to 100%. See Roads, Passaic River and USA-GSNWR above.
