| Author | Message | ||
     Lseltzer |
According to the Star Ledger this morning (http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/page1/ledger/12505021.html), the average property tax bill in Millburn last year was $10,690. The average across Essex county was $6,742. According to the tax spreadsheet, the average tax bill (residential; I don't know how they calculated the Millburn figure) in Maplewood would be $7387.33. The "old tax" figure, which I suppose corresponds to last year's taxes, averages $7237.90. Makes our taxes look downright moderate. | ||
| Alidah |
I think the Ledger should have added another number to that chart to give a true picture of property taxes--average price of a home in each town. All of the towns that had taxes of 9 to 10,000 dollars as an average are the wealthiest towns in the state, like Alpine, Short Hills, Mountain Lakes, etc. Check out the classified ads and see how expensive homes are in those towns. | ||
| Melidere |
That may well be, alidah, but i do think it highlights that Milburn, at least, is not the tax haven everyone makes it out to be. Over and over people keep posting to this board that they can buy a house in milburn for the same price and pay less taxes. If all the homes are so much more expensive, that would contradict that premise. Also, Milburn is a much smaller community. If there are a few smaller, less expensive homes there that would allow you to make that switch, it can't be too many. What i see in those statistics is that Maplewood has managed to thrive, with soaring home prices, in one of the highest taxed counties in the state, at the same time keeping our taxes lower than ANY of the towns we compare ourselves to. Our property taxes are lower, we spend less on our kids, and yet we still have this chorus that whines day-in-day-out about how we are wasting money. We probably have more volunteers in maplewood than any other community in the county. We support most of our recreation efforts, our schools, we build playgrounds, and we even clean up our parks with volunteers in an attempt to keep our taxes down. I've yet to see an expenditure in this town that wasn't hailed as yet another nail in the coffin. | ||
| Jennie |
Exactly, Alidah. All that comparison really means is that we have more lower valued homes than Millburn. Millburn has multimillion dollar homes in Short Hills that would push up the average. A much more interesting comparison would involve the house value upon which the average taxes are paid. | ||
| Lseltzer |
>>A much more interesting comparison would involve the house value upon which the average taxes are paid. Millburn hasn't had a reval since 1984, so I doubt this would be a straightforward number. | ||
| Nilmiester |
You can make numbers say whatever you want and newspapers have their own particular slant. Maplewood taxes are anything but moderate. | ||
| Melidere |
An average is an average. If you are suggesting that multimillion dollar homes are bringing the average up...where are those super-cheap specials pulling it down? I'm not denying that homes cost a lot more in milburn. I think they do. I'm questioning all these people that keep posting that they can go buy a 'slightly' smaller house there, pay LESS taxes, and put their kids in a top-rated school system. I just don't believe it. | ||
| Townie |
For the suburban NYC metropolitan area -- Long Island, Westchester and northern New Jersey -- my impression has been that Maplewood's taxes compare favorably with most every other community within comfortable commuting distance. NYC itself is lower, but it has a city income tax. And having house shopped in Milburn, I agree with Melidere. Maplewood is more affordable and, for many of us, the overall culture is more appealing in Maplewood, making it the first choice. Other New Jersey towns long ago decided to install a Route 10 or 22 or a huge mall to lower their property taxes, it appears. Maplewood has remained attractive by not doing so, although it also appears that, townwide, people now have an increased interest in improving taxable business on Springfield Avenue. Kathleen | ||
| Octofoil |
Melidere, Well, an average is not always an average. Not to get too statistical about it, but there are arithmetic averages (the average that most of us think about when applying the "average" concept), then there is the geometric mean, the median, the mode, etc. These are all measures of "central tendency", or the tendency of a group of observations to cluster around some figure or range. And then there are various measures of dispersion around that central tendency measure, like the variance and the standard deviation. And then there are measures of how "normal" the distribution is or is not, like skewness and leptokurtic. That is, the average might be x, but if the observations are grouped way to one end of the distribution, then the "average" might be totally misleading. A favorite analogy is to drown in a lake with an average depth of 4 feet; the deepest part may be 50 feet, but there may be enough shallow water to produce an arithmetic average depth of only 4 feet. A priori, I tend to think of Millburn/Short Hills as being somewhat bi-modal. That is, essentially have two "humps" in the distribution. A pretty large number (relatively speaking) of very expensive homes along with a pretty large number of typically-priced homes, with relatively few "intermediate"-priced homes in between. Thats just an impression, could be all wrong. I was away over the weekend and haven't looked at the data yet, but I get the impression that the Millburn data might be in need of some additional description (in a statistical sense). | ||
| Alidah |
This question was asked on another thread somewhere and I think it bears repeating--why the obsession with Millburn? I can tell you they don't compare their town to Maplewood. Why don't we use a more logical comparison like West Orange or Montclair? As for those people who want to move to Millburn--let 'em! Who cares? Why try to convince them? When they seriously look at houses they'll see the real picture--that high taxes notwithstanding, it's still more affordable (and more appealing, to me, at least) to live in Maplewood). | ||
| Lseltzer |
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| Eliz |
Leptokurtic, central tendency, bi-modal? Ugh my head hurts.... | ||
| Wilbur |
Alidah, I don't think anyone is "obsessed" with Millburn, and as for why people tend to compare Maplewood with it so often, I think it's because we border Millburn. We don't share borders with either West Orange or Montclair. Many people who moved to Maplewood came here for the direct train service to Manhattan, which neither W. Orange nor Montclair have. So we have more similarities to Millburn than meets the eye - it's the next train station down the line, it shares our borders, and many of us shop there. I, for one, use its Shop-Rite and King's, its CVS on Millburn Ave., I get my dog groomed there, I go to its restaurants and I go to the Short Hills mall. I hardly ever go to Montclair restaurants, and never do anything in West Orange - and I think I am fairly typical of many Maplewoodians. So it's natural to compare our town to Millburn despite the differences in housing values. And, for the record, someone said it was smaller than Maplewood - it's much bigger geographically. I think Millburn (which includes Short Hills) is one of the largest towns in Essex County in terms of square miles. | ||
| Alidah |
As for the Montclair/West Orange comparison, I do plenty of things in both towns--that's where KMart is, the good movies, the riding stables. I think the economic spread is similar in our towns, housing stock is similar, convenience to New York is similar, whether it's train or bus or car. And having grown up west of here, I know that people living in towns west of here do not consider this a comparable town to Millburn. So I think this is in our own heads. If we keep comparing ourselves to Millburn we negate what is worthwhile and special about this town. |
