Kean University in New Jersey really hasn’t done a good job lately of pretending like it cares about what the taxpayers who fund it want.
The public university purchased a $219,000 custom-made conference table late last year and is now engaging in a legal battle to force the town to give it land to expand the school tax free.
Union Mayor Manuel Figueiredo told Bloomberg Politics that the school’s actions were “offensive” to the public.
Kean’s campus currently spans 189 acres, Bloomberg reported, and its only potential for expansion is about 50 acres being vacated by Merck & Co. that was once part of the Kean estate. The school is claiming in their lawsuit that they have a legal right to the land because it has a Kean family connection.
Universities, along with some hospitals and other nonprofits, are typically given non-profit status. But giving up this land would take away $4 million from the town each year, Figueiredo told Bloomberg.
A developer had already submitted plans for residences and retail shops before the lawsuit, which would have been “an economic engine for the whole town,” Figueiredo said.
Daphne Kenyon, a fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, said that during the economic downturn and the subsequent slow recovery period, towns have looked into lifting tax exemptions on nonprofits because of of the tax benefits. Municipal acts and even some statewide measures have popped up increasingly over the past couple of years.
“We’re still in this era of anti-tax sentiment,” she told Bloomberg. “As long as you have that, doing things that don’t look like you’re raising taxes on ordinary citizens are going to be more politically salable.”
And Kean’s ability to purchase a $219,000 table on the taxpayer’s dime doesn’t make them too sympathetic in the eyes of the town.
