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Welcome to Civic Parent
Civic Parent is designed for individuals who want to better understand how our communities function — from public budgets to governance systems — and how we can work together to strengthen them. Whether you are new to this work or already engaged, I invite you to join at the level that best fits your interest and goals.
Welcome to learning tailored for community.
At CivicParent, my mission is to provide valuable, data-driven insights about local finance so that you can learn, get engaged, and grow empowered in your community.
1
State
21
Counties
564
Municipalities
650+
School Districts
What are you curious about?
The property tax bill helps fund our local community...
Local community includes school, city, and county services...each of these has a budget...and a tax rate...
...forming the total picture can be daunting...but it's not impossible.
Your questions are not unreasonable.
Reading the tax bill...
Why are there so many tax rates on the tax bill?
Doesn't the city pay for the schools?
Also, why does my "assessed value" not track with what I know my market value is?
And figuring out what the bill pays for...
Why are there not enough teachers in my kid's school?
What does the county do to support my local park??
Why isn't the city library open longer hours?
And then tracking the public money...
Why is the school budget so large?
Why did city tax increase by that much last year?
Where is the budget file located, anyway?
Gaining clarity is possible.
Civic Parent is about
Creating relevant insights,
with a fast track to public data,
so that you can learn at your own pace,
and grow empowered to self-advocate.
My name is Brigid D'Souza, aka Civic Parent.
I am a CPA and I've been writing Civic Parent for over 10 years. I've also taught college and master's level students about accounting, tax, and local NJ budgets.
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I wrote about my approach for the NJ Society of CPAs in 2023:
Using CPA Skills to Enhance Local Community Civics
"For the past 10 years, I have written a local blog called “Civic Parent” that is focused on property taxes and school funding in Jersey City — where I live and where my children have attended the public schools. My interest in writing Civic Parent started with a desire to better understand local finance in Jersey City. I have found that public budgets can often be a hard nut to crack for the average taxpayer and resident, especially if the information is shared with the public in Excel or PDF. Two good examples are New Jersey's “Property Tax Tables” and its “Municipal User Friendly Budget,” each of which provides a wealth of data about the state and local financial landscape but may be hard to access for users who are not proficient with spreadsheets. However, a CPA can use their skillset to aggregate the data, group and filter, and also visualize in software like Tableau (which is the data visualization tool that I use)."