Yea the state of NJ is historically known as a fiscally responsible enterprise...

All of your points are valid, these tax increases are wild. The state taking over would fix none of that.

Lesser of three evils

How exactly do you imagine the state taking over would work?

Right now there are what 300k residents and maybe 30k vote in local elections? I don't know either of those numbers but it's roughly to scale.

So with that level of engagement small scale change is still incredibly difficult to come by in this city, but could legitimately be done with some organization. Its doable to win elections without crazy money.

Instead you want to give power to the state, where the representatives are largely not from here and are not elected by us, the residents. Do you know who could give a single fuck about Jersey City tax rates? The representative from south jersey.

This is a terrible idea, full stop.

Go register yourself to run for city council.

Amy DeGuise or State of New Jersey. Take your pick.

This is the correct answer.

I get why you're mad. I'm mad. It's bullshit.

Also your idea is awful and would make things worse.

As opposed to doing nothing. Just wait until renters get fucked because every landlord is forced to hike rents.

you do realize that was the case for the last 20 year and they only JUST got control of it themselves like last year

Yes, exactly what I would like to see. The State to retake control.

All you suckers downvoting me. I’ll be back next year to remind y’all that this is an issue and you chose to do nothing.

Regardless of the merits of your opinion, “I’m keeping receipts and will follow up with everyone here over a stupid online comment in 12 months” is hilariously unhinged.

How about letting voters decide to approve school budget each year? Like they do in Secaucus and Weehawken in Hudson County and many others within NJ. The board is 8 out of 9 union endorsed so they are big enablers of financial mismanagement and misbehavior. There needs to be a hard cap like 2% to force them live within means. We need smart, honest finance person to run for some of those seats to fine tooth comb through all the vendor contracts and check for conflicts of interest and overpayment & identify all the deadweights in administration.

Thank you! 😁

I dont think this is unhinged, fyi.

But it already did and it did not work out well.

Taxes were lower then than they are now. So by that metric it worked.

I wish I had the ability to vote and at the same time the percentage of people come out to vote is so low. How would you get meaningful change if you do nit exercise your right to vote

You tax the fuck out of them because they don’t want to participate in the democratic process and/or elect Amy.

The spending data the state makes available is deliberately impenetrable. They used to provide a spreadsheet per district with all the categories of spending statistics, but I guess that was too useful, now each category is a spreadsheet for every district statewide.https://www.nj.gov/education/guide/2022/ind.shtml

They provide defective spreadsheets where the sort functions don't work! I'm not an excel wizard, but with patience you can mine out tidbits. How about these comparisons of cost to other large districts in NJ.

Salaries and Benefits for Operations and Maintenance of Plant: 90|92. That is, we pay more per student than 89 out of 91 other NJ districts.

Teachers: 85|92 They're among the best paid in NJ, which means the best paid in the nation.

Extracurriculars: 10|92. We spend less than 81 out of 91 peer districts. No wonder our kids hate school! We're taking their school enrichment experience and giving it to overpaid teachers and maintenance workers.

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998 millions why!

I want everyone's taxes raised, especially homeowners. Pay your fair share, whiner

Thx. Didn’t realize that was the set up before. Do you have any links I can dig deeper into?

School taxes have gone up considerably because the state reduced its funding of JC schools by over $230m since 2017. Not sure how much help they'd be solving a problem they helped create.

My bad. I am thinking of when they changed the BOE election. Not sure what I was thinking. Will delete my post so not to cause any confusion.

>I’ll be back next year to remind y’all that this is an issue and you chose to do nothing.

Lollll doesn't mean that giving control to the state would have been the right move 🤣 🤣

Will you do something about it if I upvote?

The elections in JC are so horribly understated. At least we can get automatic mail-in ballots each election now, but unless you happen to be watching r/jerseycity for the occasional AMA... I see next to nothing regarding there actually even being an election, let alone who is running and what their platform is. We get the occasional bits of signage with people's name and party on it when the city elections coincide with presidential ones but that's about it.

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Everyone hates having their taxes jacked up to fund a corrupt board of education, seems like this would be a pretty easy issue to mobilize voters over, but a political scientist I am not.

School board is impossible to vote for, and an impossible job (sure let's have 9 unpaid people in charge of a $1b budget and rotate them every couple of years based on very little information). Schools should probably just be run by mayors, or the state

Interesting did not know that. Wow seems rife for a change as people are agitated.

Silient me, fine. But then you fuck vote for hit-and-run Amy.