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.
Welcome to Civic Parent
Civic Parent began in 2013 as a small personal project: a way to make sense of local budgets, property taxes, and the systems shaping the city where I was raising my young children. Over ten years later, Civic Parent remains just one way I engage in my community. You can read more here if interested.
For now -- a few tips that I'd recommend if you are just approaching budgets, property taxes, or nuance like state education aid for the first time. I try to root my posts in public data so that readers can understand not just the numbers, but the process to access and make sense of the numbers.
- Take your time and embrace the nuance because context abounds.
- Learn in community - dialog with others to understand different perspectives as it helps inform the context.
- Demand clarity of your elected when you have questions. The elected have a very hard job to do but one important piece is to help us understand.
If you are new to the space of local finance - welcome. It is never too late to get engaged.
1
State
21
Counties
564
Municipalities
650+
School Districts
An Important Disclaimer
Start here to understand my boundaries and constraints
Civic Parent is entirely volunteer and I engage topics as I have time and capacity to do so. I am not elected or a government employee. I am trying to help others do what I do i.e. join me in this journey of finding public data, making sense of it, and then engaging in civics to grow empowered and engaged.
Your elected seek your vote to do a job. I suggest that you
- Demand answers, clarity, and accountability
- Learn about the structure they are charged with governing and administering (it is laden with constraints and trade-offs)
- Dialogue with others in community to pressure-test assumptions and share the burden of learning and advocacy
Learning about local finance is a marathon, not a sprint.
Summer 2026 Update. For the past 2 months, I've been running a public book club with fellow parent, organizer, and professor Dr. Jyl Josephson about civic organizing. Check out the book club landing page here. I've also been fielding questions about school and city budget matters; in response I've refreshed my site with updated indexing to help new readers engage my content by topical area, depending on your interest.
Civic Topics
These topics overlap, so here are starting tips.
In New Jersey, we have three local governments:
- Municipality aka town or city or boro,
- County, and
- Public Schools which are inclusive of public school systems (e.g. Jersey City Public Schools) and independent public charter schools.
Each local government provides services to the community, which means each has its own budget. And each budget has property tax as a revenue line item to fund the services.
So the topics below are interlinked and this is why taking it slowly, asking lots of questions, and dialoguing with others (including your elected and those who work in government) is a helpful part of this process.
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PROPERTY TAX
Learn about tax levys, the tax base, revaluation, and more. If you are here because of a pain point (like a tax bill you d0n't understand or an upcoming revaluation that may have you feeling uncertain about what the future holds, this may be a helpful place to start.
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LOCAL BUDGETS
Learn about our three local governments, what services they provide, how they fund it, and the process to pass the budgets each year.
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PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Learn about NJ public school policy with some basic primer posts around policy and the budgeting process, but more so with a front-row seat to how the "S-2" law played out in Jersey City from 2018 to 2022, resulting in the retraction of state aid from Jersey City's public schools.
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TAX ABATEMENTS
A tax abatement is a policy tool authorized by the state and used by the local municipality. I write about them on Civic Parent because they are a structural part of Jersey City's physical and budgetary landscape.
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CIVIC ORGANIZING
In addition to writing Civic Parent I'm also active in my community. I prioritize meeting people in real life to learn context, nuance, and background. I am a trained community organizer, a teacher, and an accountant. I created this new topic, "Civic Organizing," in 2026 to help share tools and tips for engaging the process.
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Accounting Education & CTE
I'm an accountant and former full-time accounting professor who is very active in my local CPA society. I support accounting education as early as middle and high school with an emphasis on the Career and Technical Education (CTE) framework. If you are a teacher, educator, or industry expert who is interested in this work please learn more below.
Recent Posts
Please mind the dates; I write when I have time and capacity to engage.
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.
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)."
Email Sign-Ups
I have a very basic outreach platform: virtual sign-up sheets; learn more here.