Thread by @CivicParent

1/A bit abt last 20 years of property taxes in #JerseyCity & how it can inform problems w school funding in 2018.
This is #JerseyCity’s 3 tax levies (Levy=amount raised by property taxes to help fund the budgets).
Red line is city tax. Green is County. Orange is @jcps_district

2/Notice how much city taxes have gone up in last 20 yrs. last 10 yrs in particular. The school tax have gone up, but at at slower clip. This slower growth results in smaller base on which to increase local revenue in ‘18

3/now let’s look at smaller suburbs nearby. Like Montclair (smallish city), & Maplewood, small town w few businesses to pay taxes. Some diversity but not as much as JC, and more homogenous wealth than JC (which has disparate wealth ie very wealthy & very poor)

Montclair & Maplewood pay more in school tax than they do in city tax...typical for many NJ suburbs. Not as much density so less need for some public resources required for density. That’s part of it. But Schools=paramount & help drive property values up or down.

4/Going back to #JerseyCity, our challenge is increasing the orange line UP. We will have limited capacity to do that in the short term. For same reason Reval was hard for many in DTJC in short term: annual tax expense s/be gradual increases over time. The big challenge is...

5/...NJ is reducing our state school aid in phased increments over next 7 yrs. We‘re abt to lose more $ in next 7 years from state ($175m) then we currently raise in local school tax ($125m)...so we need other $ stream in shorter term at least until the levy can grow bigger...

6/ that’s why #PayrollTax has been proposed. A new source of $ from businesses (not residents) that can help get us thru next few years.
Businesses don’t like it of course. But it’s needed.
Parents, taxpayers need to be clear on the need. To pressure deep pockets to contribute..

Btw I’ve got all tax data on my site in filterable form here: civicparent.org/2018/09/27/nj-…
You can check out any town and see their taxes for last 20 years. Part of larger project I am working on.

Ultimately we need to pay more locally for our schools. There is a lot of history and debate about fact that NJ has this system based on funding school via local property tax & how that’s not ideal. That’s a legit debate but the paradigm is not likely to change in near term.

While JC’s city tax went up in last 10 years, JC also abated more than any other town in NJ; we now have ~$11B of real estate locked up in abatements, none of which pays school tax. So “we can’t afford our own schools” rings hollow to some in burbs given that history of subsidy

And my issue w BOE & City not talking openly about this is: this is too big to backroom-deal, politick-out-of. We are on an 8-month clock. Public schools are a public good and they must be funded. This requires a public dialog. It’s a huge & complicated problem.

@threadreaderapp please #unroll TYIA