I_post_rarely t1_jadkq22 wrote on February 28, 2023 at 5:50 PM

Reply to comment by njstein 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

You need to prove that this would actually help. What are the costs associated with the merging (studies, signs, permits, etc.)? What & how many job(s) would be eliminated? How much will be “saved” when the process is complete? Would levels of service be maintained/improved/decreased?

if we save $10M on administrative costs per year (a number I completely made up, equivalent to eliminating 50 superintendent type positions) & evenly distribute that to the (slightly less than) 4M houses in NJ each household would save about $3/year. So, to offset this current increase of $200 per household we would need to save over $500M/year. Is there that much municipality bloat? I don’t know. If you have hard numbers that show we can save $1B a year that might help you gain support.

(Maybe this data already exists, I didn’t google. Would love to see a real analysis of this)

njstein t1_jadm1ry wrote on February 28, 2023 at 5:58 PM

Yeah, this is what I'd like to see happen with this first brainstorming group. Figuring out the numbers to get some hard data on that so we can help present such things in a much more clear and concise manner complete with attached research. That's a lot of work for a single individual which is why I'm trying to solicit together a group for assisting with research efforts and getting out to present this information. There's over 550+ municipalities in NJ, each with their own police department, and a full boat of town staffing positions.