Property taxes in Maryland where I live are pretty rugged, but I was reading this article and was surprised by thelevel of property taxes in New Jersey which are purportedly the highest in the nation. What services do New Jersey residents get for these big payments?
Why are New Jersey property tax rates so high? Do NJ state residents get tremendous public services?
they don’t have to pump gas, and gas is cheap.
My information is about 15 years out of date, but when I lived there:
We had the best garbage collection service on the planet. They took everything.
They also took leaves on the sidewalk, instead of having to try to stuff them in the green can like I do today.
But far more important -
My kids went to school for a full day, had language and science in junior high, had excellent, well paid teachers, and we didn’t get nickel and dimed for every trip/event. When we moved to California, my 8th grader was about a year ahead of students in her grade here. She could have been placed right into high school except for the PE requirement. She wound up going to Berkeley half time her senior year because she ran out of classes. She was in GATE in NJ, but she was not accelerated.
So, today we have quite low property taxes, but the schools and the state universities are a mess.
I won’t say it is worth it, but there is a big difference between a high property tax state and a low one.
Local governments in NJ for years were known as the most corrupt in the US. Might be better now, not sure.
For example before the current mayor of Newark the last 3 guys were all convicted of crimes.
Remember that for every dollar a NJ resident pays in property taxes,
- 55 cents goes to School Tax coffers
- 30 cents goes to Municipal Tax coffers
- 15 cents goes to County Tax coffers
Exact distribution may vary, but this is a basic guideline. The state, county and local governments and school districts are accustomed to spending more than they take in as a matter of course.
There are over 500 separate school districts in NJ, which means over 500 school boards with secretaries, administrators, prinicipals, vice-principals, etc., and it is rumored that many of these jobs are created as “favors” to friends and family. The new Governor Christie is working to curb some of this, but it’s a long fight with the NJEA (Teacher’s Union).
Local and county governments are also still hotbeds of political favors, and unfortunately the taxpayers have customarily been bankrolling this. Gov. Christie has already cut state aid to schools and municipalities, and is proposing a 2.5% tax cap with no exceptions to start next year, which will drastically cut the budgets. However, the 2.5% cap still means that the taxpayers are once more faced with funding a tax increase next year (instead of the usual 6%-8%).
However, taxpayers are used to these extra jobs creating lots of “extra” services (for recreation, senior citizens, school programs, etc.), which will no longer be able to be funded. It’s hard to take away services to which people are accustomed.
It’s mainly because of the reliance on property taxes for almost every municipal service and in particular for most of all educational services.
I don’t know where DivineCommedienne lives, but I’ve been a resident of NJ all my life, and served on my local school board for 9 years. There is precious little room for any kind of favoritism or graft in school financing. Each local budget must be publically presented and is up for a yes-or-no vote. Actual salary negotiations are closed, but just about everything else the local board does open to the public. This year entire major programs are being drastically cut or eliminated in many districts. I seriously doubt there are very many purely patronage jobs around.
I will agree that there could be more efficiency gained by consolidation of districts, but people generally don’t like the idea of not having their own local control.
The NJEA usually doesn’t represent administrators. Maybe not secretaries, either, I’m not sure now. But for sure the superintendent is very much on his/her own as far as salary and other contract terms. The NJEA’s main focus is on teachers. The largest single expense in every school system is teacher salaries, which is probably the way it should be.
What Voyager said about the NJ school services is accurate. When I was teaching, I was told that we were not permitted to ask students to pay for anything. Anything at all. The first school I taught in had a lot of low-income students, and the school district bent over backwards to assure that everything was supplied for free, including book covers. Which is ridiculous because anyone can make a book cover out of a free paper bag from the grocery store, but that was the rule.
It is also true that our school system in general is one of the best in the country. This is not to claim that each and every town, school, and teacher rates an A+, obviously there is variability as there is in everything.
Oh, and our property taxes support the private schools, too. Not directly, but we purchase private school books, provide private school bus service and all special education services.
But according to Wikipedia, there are 566 municipalities in New Jersey (cities, townships and boroughs). Now some of them are tiny, but I’d expect most cities and towns to have its own school system. (And my Connecticut hometown had two school systems; one for the elementary school and a separate one for the junior and senior high school that was shared with two other towns.) So I don’t see that the number of school districts is out of whack.
What is the rate of taxation for other things? Is that also high? I mean like I live in Chicago and we have a lot of little extra taxes that can add up quick.
So I was wondering, if the taxes in someway balance each other off? Or is the overall taxation rate high in NJ.
NJ has a lot of suburbanites being so close to Philadelphia and New York City. Sure there are rural areas and rust-belt-like cities as Camden and Newark, but a lot of it is suburban which may mean the property taxes are high as suburbanites can afford it.
Are property taxes in NJ imposed at one level or multilevels (such as state, county, township, city, etc)?
I think a lot of the Eastern states have more level of government which can lead to duplicaton of service and higer costs
For comparison purposes my house in NC is tax valued at $240,000 and my local property taxes are $2000 per year. From what I hear for that same value of house in NJ my local property taxes would be $6000-$8000 per year. 3-4x times as high. And BTW, the schools here are very good.