The following is an Asbury Park Press article:

The township’s tax assessor announced her abrupt retirement, following a series of scathing rebukes from some members of the Orthodox Jewish community and increasing pressure from an overload of property-tax appeals.

Linda Solakian said she sent letters to the Township Committee, the township manager and the Ocean County Board of Taxation, saying she will retire Sept. 15 due to health reasons brought on by stress at work. She was planning to retire in February.

However, Mayor Robert Singer said he has seen only a copy of Solakian’s letter to the county and will not recognize the retirement until the township receives one of its own.

“Once I officially know this is the case, then she must give us two weeks’ notice, and we then can take proper action,” he said.

Solakian said she will remain on sick leave until Sept. 15. The veteran assessor had been facing mounting criticism from resident complaints and Jewish press articles accusing her of anti-Semitism and improper tax adjustments.

In an Aug. 22 article that relied heavily on unnamed sources, a local Jewish weekly, said, “Some observations on the assessor’s conduct in public meetings indicates an unfair bias in her approach to different members of the Lakewood community.”

Solakian said the article was a factor in her early retirement, calling it “disgusting.”

Yehuda Shain, a local government critic who at one time applied for Solakian’s job, has filed three complaints against the assessor in the past month. Shain said he applied for the position in 1996, the year Solakian started, but has since allowed his certified tax assessor license to lapse.

Recently, Township Committeeman Steven Langert and Solakian engaged in a shouting match in her office, according to witnesses.

Solakian would only say the argument was about an appeal in Pine River Village, a mostly Orthodox senior neighborhood that was being reassessed in preparation for lifting its age restriction. Langert said he would not comment about an “open personnel matter.”

Solakian, who began as a clerk typist in the assessor’s office, said she has developed a number of stress-related health problems following a 2006 revaluation that brought some 4,500 tax appeals to her desk this year, comprising a third of all appeals in the county.

“It’s a very high volume,” said county tax board President P.G. Waxman.

Solakian said the complaints of prejudice came from “a handful of people who didn’t get what they want.” Of the 3,000 appeals she settled this year, she said, about half were with Orthodox residents.

“I have never been a biased person in my entire life and never intend to be,” Solakian said.

(Source: APP)