| Author | Message | ||
     Tom Reingold Citizen Username: Noglider Post Number: 2094 Registered: 1-2003  |
TomR, I bought my house in June, so I don't have any experience. I take your word for it that your valuation doesn't rise from year to year and that your taxes increase anyway. But there are occasional revaluations, right? However your taxes increase, harpo's point (and many others') is that property taxes are getting difficult to manage, yet they were instituted because they were a good indicator of ability to pay. But they're not any more. People occasionally call me TomR because of my name, especially in threads where you don't participate, and I'd stop them if I could. Let's just agree that we have cool names. Tom Reingold the prissy-pants There is nothing | ||
| Tom Reingold Citizen Username: Noglider Post Number: 2095 Registered: 1-2003 |
clkelley, thanks for trying to bring some rationality back in here. What are the base assumptions? Our taxes are hard to afford, lots of them go to the schools, yet the school is budget crunched. It is further crunched because some attend illegally but we can't agree on how many or what to do about that. In the above paragraph, I can't see why there has to be partisanism. How to remedy the tax problem can easily be partisan, because taxing Mr. X less probably means Mr. Y pays more. For whatever it's worth, I'm willing to pay more in income tax if it helps to solve society's problems. I feel this is my duty as an upper middle class member. But I also think that people above my income (or wealth) stratum should contribute more than I do. Tom Reingold the prissy-pants There is nothing | ||
| Redsox Citizen Username: Redsox Post Number: 413 Registered: 6-2002 |
earth to reingold, earth to reingold,... the wealthy never pay their fair share of taxes... and they never will...... | ||
| Tom Reingold Citizen Username: Noglider Post Number: 2097 Registered: 1-2003 |
Redsox, true, but we can still bitch and moan over it. Tom Reingold the prissy-pants There is nothing | ||
| ffof Citizen Username: Ffof Post Number: 1931 Registered: 5-2001  |
bobk's point rings true with me that if there is an economic downturn and income goes down, you're in a pickle. Let's tax the hell out of gas (everyone uses it*) cigs (people shouldn't use it) booze (everyone uses it especially in an economic downturn  ) lottery (people just shouldn't play this game but they do). *maybe then it would force the gas guzzling SUV owners to fight to get SUVs to be more environmentally friendly and that in turn could cause everyone to be fighting for alternatives to fossil fuel  | ||
| TomR Citizen Username: Tomr Post Number: 114 Registered: 6-2001 |
Tom Reingold, Don't worry about the name. I don't. Sorry you didn't see my tounge planted firmly in my cheek. It was only a point of minor confusion when you first started posting, and someone would make a reference like "Tom R said ..." and I sat there wondering when I said that. The tax thing. While I appreciate that the tax burden is getting difficult to bear for some home owners, the increases are being inposed only because WE are demanding a certain level of service. We have met the enemy, an he is us. The occasional revaluations. We had a reval in the late sixties I believe and then again in 2000. That qualifies as occasional, I guess. Have there been other revals of which I'm unaware? Back to the topic. Does anybody have any information on how many illegal students we have in the district? I saw harpo's estimate of twenty students. Assuming the estimate of twenty is correct, are there any statisticians out there who can tell us what their cost to the district is? Even if we use the commonly accepted ~$10,000.00, per student, were only talking about $200,000.00, or about one quarter of one percent of an $80,000,000.00, budget. Less than our copier costs, and a fifth of our non special ed transportation costs. If we want to reduce our tax burden, we have to consider a lot more than eliminating the the specious $200k cost of illegal students. I'll rant more later. Tom. If you want to PM your address, I'll let you know what the PR assessed value was for your property. TomR. The one and only. PS. Redsox, What is their fair share? | ||
| harpo Citizen Username: Harpo Post Number: 1206 Registered: 6-2001 |
Tom R, Hard to keep up with the conversation at this point, so forgive me if I'm repeating what you've already been told. Your share of the town's budget is determined by the market value of your house. To make it very simple (not that you couldn't handle more, but I can't!), let's pretend the town has a budget of $1000 to pay for schools, parks, roads, etc. The town then says it will charge every homeowner One Dollar per every $100 of the Assessed Value of their Home in order to raise the money to pay the bills. So if I live in a home worth $100 on today's market, I pay One Dollar in taxes. If you live in a home worth $200, you pay $2 in taxes. If next year we need a new firehouse and the town budget is $2000, the town will say: Now we are going to charge everybody $2 per every $100 of Assessed Value. Then I will pay $2 and you will pay $4. Now look what happens: The state of New Jersey decides to close Route 78 and put in a river, which creates waterfront property. I live right by Route 78, the market value of my house shoots up to $500. At the same time, the state announces it's going to build a new drug rehabilitation halfway house on your block. Not only do I have to pay much more in taxes because my market value increased. I have to pay more taxes because your market value decreased. I may not have the ability to pay the taxes on a $500 house that I only paid $100 for because that was my budget, and it's that much harder if your house price is in decline. The efforts to redevelop Springfield Ave. are to a large extent being undertaken to boost home property values in that area because that would lower the property tax bills of people living in other parts of town. While I support improving Springfield Ave wholeheartedly, I do not support attempting to lower some residents taxes at the expense of other residents --- yet current New Jersey law, controlled by Trenton, demands that we do. The largest part of our local tax bill goes to fund education, which is a state-mandated service. The state also demands that all children in New Jersey receive an equitable education, which means we are liable for the costs of doing that as well as supporting our own school district. I advocate using state revenues to pay that bill, in the main through a progressive income tax, not because I'm a Democrat but because I think it more rational and has no downsides for this community. | ||
| harpo Citizen Username: Harpo Post Number: 1207 Registered: 6-2001 |
bobk and ffof, If you have an economic downturn, people have fewer raises or lose their jobs altogether, which means many can't afford paying their ever-rising property taxes and have to leave their homes or the community entirely. Those who don't leave balk at high taxes and insist on reductions in the school budget, which is exactly what is going on now. I'm assuming that if you switch to a state-collected, income-based school funding tax (with the usual caveal that some of it may come from gas taxes, etc), this school district will continue to fund education at the same level as it did before. If there is an economic downturn, that state still provides a much deeper source of revenue, with much more flexibility to allocate money, than the town has. During the Great Depression, real estate prices collapsed and people had their homes foreclosed on them. If we have the real estate deflation the gloomsters are predicting, who is going to continue paying $12,000-20,000 in real estate taxes on houses whose value has plummeted? The school budget will be slashed. Or there will be a tax revolt that forces change in Trenton. | ||
| harpo Citizen Username: Harpo Post Number: 1208 Registered: 6-2001 |
ffof, Gas tax revenues are just as subject to economic downturns as any other kind of revenue. People do less discretionary travel in hard times, plus people who lose their jobs no longer commute to work. Do you have a specific problem with a progressive income tax? A tax like a gas tax is regressive, and captures more of the income of lower and middle class people to pay for services heavily used by the upper classes. Is there some reason you think upper class people should pay less to maintain the roads and schools than working class people should? | ||
| harpo Citizen Username: Harpo Post Number: 1209 Registered: 6-2001 |
sportsnut, I'm sitting down. Are you? The first line of your post amused me because it sounded like the intro to a sadsack comedy routine: "I spent the early part of my career working on ways to save taxes for wealthy individuals. But then George Bush downsized my job." (Rim shot.) And when you said you'd be a hypocrite for advocating taxes on "the other guy", I was wondering if you thought we should leave the smokers and gamblers alone and just tax the hell out of accountants. (just kidding.) | ||
| harpo Citizen Username: Harpo Post Number: 1210 Registered: 6-2001 |
TomR, I agree with you totally about the calculus for illegal students and think the tax stress fuels fantasies that there is a lot of money to be saved there. (And yes, folks, I support improving the registration process if need be and booting out students who belong in other districts.) | ||
| Cowboy Citizen Username: Cowboy Post Number: 342 Registered: 9-2003  |
Why not try something like this? http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-12-04-bounty-hunters_x.htm | ||
| lumpynose Citizen Username: Lumpyhead Post Number: 686 Registered: 3-2002  |
The district admits to 1% or 60 students. Since we have a pretty easy system to beat compared to other towns, you can double that. | ||
| harpo Citizen Username: Harpo Post Number: 1211 Registered: 6-2001 |
ffof (sorry I missed this), I said before I think we can learn from New York's mistakes but that the quality of its schools are comparable to ours, making the "local control" issue a red herring. In fact, I think existing New Jersey law, which insists on equity in education throughout the state, means that the reforms we write over the next 5 to 8 years will have to be different from New York's. What I really want out of a rewrite is two things: recognition that educational equity, as defined by New Jersey law, is a state responsibility and a recognition that children are but one class of New Jerseyans who need protection and service from the government. I am willing to spend far more on education than we do for however long it is needed or wherever it is need, but I'm not willing to torque and distort all state policy because of fears, simply fears, about what might happen to a few affluent school districts who will still get funded at the levels they have been funded (something the property tax lovers can't promise for Maplewood). | ||
| rckymtn Citizen Username: Rckymtn Post Number: 228 Registered: 5-2001 |
Obviously coming late to this discussion, but have participated in it before. Personal experience is that "the mommies know," at least at the elementary level, who the out-of-boundary kids are. They are the kids whose parents refuse to put down any information at all for publication in the class directory, and who refuse to supply a phone number for the "phone tree" that is employed when there is a snow day or an emergency. (There are some who put down phone numbers that are not Maplewood/SO exchanges, easy to find out on the web, and no, they're not cell phones.) Yes, there might be legit reasons for withholding this info -- but they would be very paranoid reasons. There are 2-3 kids in this category in every single classroom. Again, based on my observations and conversations with the moms. Also based on personal observation, last year alone in the kid's class -- 3 kids left during the year under "mysterious" circumstances, meaning one day just didn't come back to school and nobody supposedly knew anything or said anything, and in one case, the kids were told in class that "x" didn't live here and had to go to his own elementary school. Keep the blinders on if you want, folks, but your sky-high property taxes, going up every year, are being used to educate the masses -- not just the children of Maplewood/South Orange. If you're comfortable with that and have extra money to spend on social welfare for surrounding communities, fine. But you can't deny the existence of the issue. That is complete ignorance. | ||
| TomR Citizen Username: Tomr Post Number: 115 Registered: 6-2001 |
harpo, You seem to be using the terms "assessed value" and "market value" interchangably. The fact that you now have a river view and I have a halfway house down the block won't make any difference to our respective tax bills until there a revaluation. Having had such a reval, and given that Township revenue is derived primarilly from residential ratables, it is only fair that you pay more in taxes. Again, I appreciate that this new hypothetical tax apportionment may be a financial hardship, but the fact remains that the Township's revenue demands wentup because WE demanded a new firehouse. You think that a value based tax system is unfair. Some think that an income based system is unfair. Yet others think that a consumption based system is unfair. I think it depends on who's writing the checks that usually determines what they think is unfair. BTW. You've several time mentioned the concept of an equitable education requirement. Whence this requirement commeth? Or is your choice of phrases a substitute for our Constitutional mandate of providing a "thorough and efficient" education. Also with regard to your subsequent post regarding the illegal student problem, when possible, we should eliminate these students from our district; or even better, collect an appropriate tuition. I just don't want to see us spend a quarter million dollars to stop this $200,000.00, drain. If lumpy is correct, just adjust my numbers accordingly. In short, its not the illegal students that are driving our Township's revenue demands up to the point of financial hardship. Its OUR demand for services. Comments anyone. rckymtn? TomR. | ||
| Tom Reingold Citizen Username: Noglider Post Number: 2104 Registered: 1-2003 |
Taking lumpyhead's estimate, that's 120 illegal students. I think we spend $9,000 per student per year. I think it's fair to say that it costs the district $1,200,000 to have them since the number is so substantial. (I.e. I won't make the argument that the marginal cost is zero.) We have about 10,500 households funding the school district. Assuming (inaccurately) that each household funds the district equally, that's a ripoff of $114 per household per year. Whether this is worth making a stink over is an exercise left to the proverbial reader. My own view is we should enforce the registration requirements better but not perform any witch hunts. Tom Reingold the prissy-pants There is nothing | ||
| las Citizen Username: Las Post Number: 14 Registered: 10-2003 |
Yeah, Tom, that sounds great. | ||
| harpo Citizen Username: Harpo Post Number: 1214 Registered: 6-2001 |
TomR, First of all, I don't think the reval was unfair and was a loud defender of it, nor do I think all taxes on assets are unfair. I agree with you: Assessments are a snapshot of market values set during just one revaluation. Depending on who is in political control, some period of time elapses before another reval is done, and another snapshot of the market is taken. If market values remain uniform over time (they almost never do), all individual shares of the town tax bill will remain the same. My problem is not that town officials uniformly enforce the law imposed on them by Trenton . My problem is that the law itself is injurious to the residents of New Jersey in many ways (and it makes local politicians scapegoats for the pain created by Trenton). The law doesn't levy taxes according to the taxpayers' ability to pay it. Doesn't that strike you as a crushing power? The government not only has the power to tax the taxpayer beyond the capacity of the taxpayer to pay it, it has the power to seize the asset for failure to pay! Most homeowners sell instead, often at a loss, depending on the condition of the local market. I used an uncontroversial local budget item like a firehouse just for the sake of illustration. In the real-life case of the schools, this is an obligation imposed on you and I by the state. Imagine if the state required every community to build a state-of-the-art homeland security shelter in Maplewood, and then passed a law insisting that this could only be funded out of local revenues. No state revenues. Would you think you were being well served by your government? Perhaps you have kids attending the state's public schools. I don't. State law obliges me to provide "a thorough and efficient" education, as you point out, to New Jersey's children, and then insists all the money be raised through local property taxes. The real net effect has been to impose on homeowners an extortionate tax while at the same time failing to educate ALL of New Jersey's children to anything even remotely resembling the Constitutional requirement. I realize people disagree and some people are purely ideological about it. But it is possible to also examine the law and the facts. Yes, I agree with you about the cost/benefits of pursuing so-called illegal students. By the way, my figure about how many such students might be in the schools is based on my having asked several elected officials two or three years ago, and the number consistently seemed to be "around 20." That said, I can't remember if I only asked about CHS, since it is my impression that most of the anxiety (not all, some) about out of district students centers on CHS). It is possible however that I did ask about the whole district. But I've never seen numbers that made me think it would possible to eliminate staff based on barring out of district students, or that even total success in pursuing this matter would have any visible effect on my property tax bill. As to your final question: Yes, it's not the illegal students that are driving our Township's revenue demands up to the point of financial hardship. But it is not OUR demand for services. It is the state and Federal government imposing ever higher standards for all students as a measure of success, combined with the fact that it is no longer possible to staff schools with a pool of underpaid but highly educated women who have no other job options. | ||
| TomR Citizen Username: Tomr Post Number: 117 Registered: 6-2001 |
harpo, Without trying to parse every statement, it seems we are getting closer. It seems our biggest point of disagreement is that I believe that such as is done by our elected representatives, be it our BOE, out TC, our County Freeholders, those wonderful people in Trenton and/or D.C. (not to mention what we did in adopting a Constitutional amendment without funding the mandate) is done in OUR name, and that we bear the responsibility. Hence, OUR demand for increased services. Those who say I didn't vote for that person, they're not my __________, are kidding themselves. In the meanwhile, please take a look at the Budget Summary at: http://www.somsd.k12.nj.us/finance/2004-05BudgetSummary020204.pdf If you can identify the unfunded mandate items in the summary, it would be of great help to me. I'm waiting for the line item budget, but if you, or somebody else, can get me started on the Budget Proposal by pointing out those items over which the District has no control, I'll be able to address the budget more effectively and much more quickly, when it is made available. As I said, it seems we're getting closer (maybe we never really disagreed). Want to get together on neutral territory (St. James Gate??) and pick a BOE candidate as well as solve the rest of the world's problems? TomR. |
