and it will continue because no one wants to ever do any of the things that would make the taxes actually go down:

• consolidate municipal governments, police services (ideally to a county level), school districts (each tiny little town does not need it's own k-8 and then pay extra for send-receive to another district's high school), and others. it can't just be one of these things, it has to be all. you need to have fewer mayors, councils, administrative staff, and having police forces at higher levels would better spread out the cost of salaries for cops.

• more tax sources than just the property tax. other places in the country get pieces of the sales tax to fund municipal budgets. can't do that in nj. doesn't help all towns evenly (would be more of a boon for places with big downtowns and shopping) but it would also encourage such development.

• modify or kill the fucking farm exemption thing. it's basically an exploited joke at this point. every single rich person who has a small apiary or grows a few christmas trees on their property and thus pays way less in taxes is more that everyone else has to pay to make up the difference. budgets are what they are. either raise the money level high enough where it helps actual farmers but can't be as easily exploited or kill it and replace it with something more useful.

but given that we live and die by our precious home rule in this state, none of this will ever happen, so we all just keep getting stuck paying more for property taxes every year.