The municipal budget is hyper detailed but when we summarize it we can see a basic pattern that repeats each year:

• The majority of the municipal budget is salaries and benefits (aka “people cost”) for city employees (with police and fire being the biggest departments with the most employees).
• Taxpayers collectively help fund this investment through the city tax levy. Abatement PILOT fees are another revenue (and offset to the property tax), followed by state aid and other sources.
• As Jersey City is growing, so is its structural expense, and so is the city tax levy to help pay for it all.

There is nuance to all of this and lots of detail worth diving into; that said, my aim is to keep this rather basic and provide the big picture view

There are three local levies: the school levy, the municipal levy, and the county levy.  The levy is often the primary funding source for local government, particularly the schools; by contrast, municipalities and counties have other revenue sources they can use including PILOT fees, court-related fees, and local revenues (e.g. parking related monies).  And the state can (and does) impose levy “caps” that limit the levy from increasing by certain threshold percentages each year; this nuance is beyond the scope of this post but is still worth noting.

In late October 2022, Jersey City’s municipal council passed its annual 2022 budget with a $112 million increase to the city levy. This action capped a year of change in Jersey City’s property tax landscape; school tax and city tax have both increased. Residents saw these increases in their tax bills, but what can make this somewhat confusing is that the rates are not approved until the second half of the year. Thus, not only did tax expense going up, but it also increased in a lump-sum manner in the third and fourth quarters.

This post breaks aims to break it down for taxpayers.