Submitted by rollotomasi07071 t3_11e8wdl in newjersey
Reply to comment by beowulf92 in New Jersey’s notorious property-tax bills went up once again last year, growing on average by more than $200 or more than 2%, according to the latest data from the state; the increase pushed the average New Jersey property-tax bill to a record-high $9,490 in 2022 by rollotomasi07071
Density doesn’t really decrease property taxes. A backyard costs nothing for a city. If anything it saves them money since less demand on parks and open space (you need so many trees per sq mile).
Density actually increases taxes since you need to upgrade some pretty expensive infrastructure to account for it. New sewers with increased capacity, water mains etc.
People are the problem. Especially the ones who have kids. People who use government resources, shit in sewers, attend schools, use roads (either driving or having packages delivered) etc.
Free condoms and birth control would lower property taxes. Free vasectomies would lower property taxes. Those are meaningful things towns and the state could enact now to make a difference. Ideally anyone who didn’t want to have kids wouldn’t pay a penny on that quest. We’d all ultimately save money.
Adult communities are also a good way to lower property taxes, they pay property tax, but the shriveled up genitals don’t put kids in schools.
This is, literally, insane.
Yep that's the typical ignorant response. Just build high density housing everywhere you look.... like New Jersey already is in full of high density housing, cities and warehouses. Like we don't clear cut enough forest s. And the more high density housing you build the more schools you need the more taxes go up. It makes my eyes bleed reading ignorant s*** like that in a post about why our taxes so high... Oh because of schools. Why not have the whole damn state look like one big Walmart parking lot with every single bit of green space annihilated for high density housing.
People are definitely part of the problem. Adult communities could certainly help too, but without a consistent aging population to continually move in to keep those communities filled, there's now just excess housing stock limited by age that's going to inflate property values, because we didn't build enough housing for everyone, and there's fewer people paying taxes on the necessary budget for the municipality, so taxes across the board will need to rise to make up that difference. The average birth rate continues to fall, so that situation is going to happen sooner or later no matter what, unless there's a massive influx of elderly people relocating to the state, but they typically do the opposite and leave here.
People having fewer kids means people moving into communities aren't having the same strain on schools as they used to. But the more people that move in, the more people that can be taxed to pay for the increase in services. When the density being thrown up is nothing but hundreds and hundreds of units of rentals, yes that hurts in the long run, but increase the density of tax paying citizens in addition to rentals, attract non-residential uses in close proximity that can serve them, and those too get taxed to reduce the tax burden on residents. Infrastructure costs will drastically scale down for the greater the population they are being built/improved for.
Free birth control and vasectomies etc. is definitely an interesting idea that could help some areas of the country/world that don't have the educational infrastructure to sustain the growth. Not this state though I'd argue. We don't have wild rates of unexpected pregnancies driving population growth, and we luckily have ample access to family planning resources including abortions, pills, etc when necessary for an accidental pregnancy. I understand your thought process, but it wouldn't do anything for our state.
Home Rule and awfully managed land use and zoning decisions are what need to change. Anything people based will fail once the demographics it was based on change. A systematic overhaul of how growth/development/redevelopment occurs and adapts to changing demographics here is very much needed for long-term change here.
Thanks for the convo! Always good to hear differing opinions.
People aren’t part of the problem, they are the problem. That’s not really debatable. It’s math. Town budgets are public and you can see what services cost how much money. All services are for people, not land outside of the fire department (which is technically split).
Ideally property tax would be based on how many people in the property rather than it’s value, since that’s how much of a tax burden that property is. Someone with an acre of woods is technically saving the town money on open space they’d otherwise purchase. Someone with a kid just cost the town thousands.
Meanwhile a dozen townhouses don’t even come close to covering their burden.
Taxing people, while unpopular is the solution to property tax. It would also effectively be a carbon tax since people = carbon.
Sure boomer, cause your group never uses any services, like EMS when someone takes a fall or has chest pains, or a stroke, or maybe leaves the burner on the stove on and gets the fire department to pay them a little visit.
You don't like taxes move to Florida, somebody paid the taxes to put your kids through school, I bet you weren't bitching and moaning then, or if you didn't have kids, well someone paid for you, show a little gratitude, or at the very least, move out.
Those are all services that scale by the number of people in an area (density). Not size of property.
Your proving my point. Big brain you got there.
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