> In Massachusetts, there's a cap of 2.5% for property tax increases without a ballot measure. This means that almost every year, local budgets are shrinking relative to inflation.
Doesn't MA reassess on transfer? CA does, so property tax revenues grow faster than the cap.
Note that CA also does "catchup" - the bill goes up by the cap whenever the difference between the assessed and real value is greater than the cap, no matter what's happened to the real value. That's why property tax bill is going up this by the cap year even though the value of my house took a 30% hit last year. It's the same for anyone who has owned for more than 5 years.
Note that housing inflation has been more than other inflation, so trailing housing inflation doesn't imply that the local govt is losing ground.
> "Screw those councilmen, they want to raise our taxes so they're holding these services hostage."
Since that's how govts actually behave....
Look at what they do and don't threaten to cut and ask yourself if those are rational priorities. Or, do those two lists tell you that they're using the "cut" list to keep funding for the "don't cut" list.
Note - you have to look at both lists, not just the "cut" list. And you have to look at the amounts for the various items.
There was no money. It was a choice between raising taxes or cutting services.
And people like you respond to that with "You're such jerks for holding our services hostage!"
Arithmetic is not a jerk. It's just a fact. Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
RE: the percentages, the deal is that the total local property tax take goes up by 2.5% a year. If your property increases in assessed value, you might see personal increase of more than that but someone else saw an increase of less to make up for it.
> > There was no money. It was a choice between raising taxes or cutting services.
0 money? Really? I'll bet that it was really just not enough to pay for what the pols wanted to do.
If the latter, they could fund some services. That's why I said to look at what they protected and what they said that they'd cut if they didn't get more money.
If you do that, you'll discover that they're protecting some things that should have a lower priority than things that they put on the "cut" list.
> And people like you respond to that with "You're such jerks for holding our services hostage!"
Since they're saying that they don't have enough money for police and fire protection but do for lesser things, why is it wrong to characterize that as "holding our services hostage"? What is an acceptable way to criticise that behavior?
Or, are you claiming that they should always get enough money for whatever they want?
> Arithmetic is not a jerk. It's just a fact.
Yup, it's a fact. If you have $100 and what you want costs $200, you need to scale back your wants.
The "jerk" behavior is to spend the $100 on lower priorities and whine that you don't have enough money to pay for higher priorities.
> Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
Huh? The fact that some govt wants to do something does not obligate me to pay for it.
I was one of the pols. I agonized over the budgets. What we "wanted to do" was continue to pay our teachers. There wasn't enough money for that.
It was simple arithmetic, a choice between letting teachers go or raising taxes.
What many people did for selfish reasons, and you're doing for ideological purity reasons, is attempt to change the debate to some abstract notion of "government spending my money". Hey buddy, it's your kids in the schools, and you even get to vote on the tax increase. Just don't call me a jerk or a liar -- I'm giving it to you straight.
Quote anamax : The "jerk" behavior is to spend the $100 on lower priorities and whine that you don't have enough money to pay for higher priorities.
Which lower priorities was I wasting money on here, exactly? You're the expert. And I'm sure there weren't any state or federal mandates involved, legal obligations or anything like that. "jerk" behavior is refusing to educate yourself on things and hand-waving away instead so you can keep your nice simple universe. Mental shortcuts will always lead to uninformed opinions.
> It was simple arithmetic, a choice between letting teachers go or raising taxes.
Somehow I doubt that teacher salaries were your only expense. I doubt that teacher salaries were even your only not-mandated expense. (As to "mandated", I've found that some of the "mandates" are an excuse. Yes, I've done this exercise before.)
A 20% reduction in income can be painful, but in a world where lots of people are taking a bigger hit....
Which reminds me, I like your assumption that govt spending, specifically teacher salaries, are the most important priority.
Your tax base took a hit because people took a huge hit, yet for some reason you think that teachers should be spared. Other folks take a pay cut and lose jobs, but ....
Which reminds me, do those teachers have defined benefit pensions? Are they fully funded? Few folks in the private sector have such pensions and none of them have taxpayer guarantees.
And yes, I noticed that you ducked my questions about budget components. As I wrote, I've gone through this before.
You didn't ask a question, you threw out a bunch of assumptions, most of which were so far off base that I need a stronger word than "wrong".
You're still doing it here. Did you read my earlier comments about how the property tax is assessed and collected? If you had, you wouldn't be talking about how the tax base took a "hit".
> If you had, you wouldn't be talking about how the tax base took a "hit".
You claimed that you didn't have enough money to pay teachers. There are three ways to get into that situation.
(1) The amount of money that you're paying teachers (as a whole) has gone up.
(2) You have less money than you had last year.
(1) is dumb unless you have more money coming in, which leaves (2). Should I have assumed dumb?
> Did you read my earlier comments about how the property tax is assessed and collected?
Yes, I did. The total amount of property tax collected can go down if the total assessed value of property goes down. Of course, not all of that property tax revenue goes for teacher salaries, so it's possible for the teacher salary budget to go down when the property tax revenues don't change.
Anad that gets us back to priorities. When total tax revenues go down (or new spending comes in that exceeds new revenues), govts make two lists - things that they threaten to cut and things that they don't threaten to cut. The composition of those two lists tells you want they think is valuable.
If your "teacher salary budget" got cut, it's because something else didn't get cut. Why do I keep saying that? Because property tax revenues pay for more than just teacher salaries.
Doesn't MA reassess on transfer? CA does, so property tax revenues grow faster than the cap.
Note that CA also does "catchup" - the bill goes up by the cap whenever the difference between the assessed and real value is greater than the cap, no matter what's happened to the real value. That's why property tax bill is going up this by the cap year even though the value of my house took a 30% hit last year. It's the same for anyone who has owned for more than 5 years.
Note that housing inflation has been more than other inflation, so trailing housing inflation doesn't imply that the local govt is losing ground.
> "Screw those councilmen, they want to raise our taxes so they're holding these services hostage."
Since that's how govts actually behave....
Look at what they do and don't threaten to cut and ask yourself if those are rational priorities. Or, do those two lists tell you that they're using the "cut" list to keep funding for the "don't cut" list.
Note - you have to look at both lists, not just the "cut" list. And you have to look at the amounts for the various items.