What's UP with New Jersey?

[barbeml]

I'm not sure about the percentages, but this in general is true. The problem though is that state money used to go to fund the local schools. Then the state cutdown the amount of local school aid without giving a tax break. Without that piece of funding, local towns were forced to raise property taxes. So even though the increase came at the local level, it was caused by the state not allocating the same amount of funds it historically had. Bottom line, pay more for less.

The real problem is that NJ has 566 municipalities, but 600+ school districts...quite a few of which have no school building in them. Multiply that by superintendents, admin staff, etc. Many sane folks here are crying for consolidation and shared services/purchasing, but the towns shriek "Home rule!" Home Rule is simply code for the local share of patronage, bid rigging and bribery.

We have 21 counties. 21 school districts, one statewide teacher's contract and a strict per-pupil school funding calculation sound good to me. The savings would be enormous, it would bring parity to school funding (that is, you don't get a better education just because there are expensive houses in your area), and we would eliminate hundreds of opportunities for corruption, for which we are famous in NJ (I knew someone who went to jail for a school bid-rigging scandal in the 1980s--it is so pervasive here).

I am unhappy that the sales tax increase will go toward property tax relief, because it does nothing to address the reasons WHY property taxes are out of control here. Neither party has even addressed the issue, let alone tried to really fix it.

 

[bballmom56]

The whole property tax rebate is ridiculous. We pay the full amount and then they give us back a small portion. Can you imagine how much this program costs to administer? Good grief, either just change our bills to reflect what we should pay after the rebate or, if they need it that badly, just keep it and let the taxpayers save the cost of operating the program.