I've created this infographic as part of the 4th post of my 4-part series about the School Tax Rate in Jersey City. The municipality's growth is a factor in the underfunding of our public schools. There is a domino effect at work; city growth is ahead in the line of dominos, and our kids being starved of resources in their schools is at the far end of the line of dominos. I will be writing about the budget process in my last and final post of this series, including the interplay between the school tax levy and city tax levy, ...
A Closer Look at Jersey City's School Tax Rate, Part 3: A Case for Increasing the School Tax Levy Jersey City: let's talk about the School Tax Levy Specifically... (a) what the school tax levy is, (b) how and why the school tax levy must go up in Jersey City and (c) how the public can support that effort. Background About the Crisis This is the third in a 4-part series about 2018 school tax rates, with a focus on Jersey City. This series will use public data that I have visualized in Tableau here. To read the first post ...
This is the second in a 4-part series about 2018 school tax rates, with a focus on Jersey City. This series will use public data that I have visualized in Tableau here. To read the first post in the series, click here. “How does Jersey City’s school tax rate compare with the rest of New Jersey?” The answer: Jersey City has a comparatively low school tax rate compared with the rest of the state. We can see this from several different perspectives, which I’ll detail below. Also, we can glean insight into why Jersey City has such a low school ...
This is the first in a 4-part series about 2018 school tax rates, with a focus on Jersey City. This series will use public data that I have visualized in Tableau here. I was asked recently, “how does Jersey City’s school tax rate compare with other towns and cities in NJ?” We can answer this question by using property tax data that is published each year here by NJ’s Local Government Services. I visualized the 2018 data in Tableau (it’s provided at the bottom of this post). This is part one of a 4-part series looking at school taxes in ...
I wanted to share some civic questions that can be asked on the record or included in an email to the BOE. Why did five of Board of Education trustees approve a budget that included an incorrect tax base number? I wrote about this error in detail here, but to quickly recap: the Jersey City Board of Education used an incorrect tax base value in its budget presentation. It then based its estimated per-homeowner school tax increase estimates on that error. This NJ.com report gives the initial report of the error: “The 2019-20 budget will increase the school tax levy by ...
I am a team member with Jersey City Together and a leader on the JC Together education advocacy team. I co-wrote with this op-ed with Dr. Jyl Josephson and Rev. Dr. Alonzo Perry, Sr. about Jersey City’s school funding crisis. No Way to Run a World Class School District ...
The Jersey City Board of Education used an incorrect tax base value in its budget presentation. It then based its estimated per-homeowner school tax increase estimates on that error. This NJ.com report gives the initial report of the error: “The 2019-20 budget will increase the school tax levy by 10 percent to $136.5 million. The school district says that amounts to a $320 increase for the owner of a home with an average, $439,000 assessment. Local activist group Jersey City Together says that number is really about $155. The group notes that the district’s budget presentation on the tax hike cites ...
I’ve been getting some questions in advance of the Board of Education meeting tonight, and thought I’d share via a post, so everyone has access. This is all public data, and we can endeavor to understand it in community. If you have a question, please email me at [email protected]. When was the BOE given notice about the budget cuts? June 2018. JCPS’s anticipated ~$25 million cut in state aid was announced in summer of 2018. The Education Law Center reported this in June 2018: “Jersey City would have $7.5 million cut in 2018-19, followed by cuts of $36 million each ...
Jersey City’s Board of Education is emphasizing a “10%” school tax levy increase as if that’s a big jump. Except 10% isn’t a big dollar-for-dollar jump, when you look at the entire picture. In actuality, 10% is way too small, given the fiscal hole we’re in as a district. A simple example can illustrate how these percentages are gamed in talking points to make it look like the BOE is making a huge lift, when in fact it’s not doing nearly enough. Let’s say I pay each of my kids an allowance: Indira gets $1 / week. Arjun gets $10 / ...
This is part of a series about the 2019/20 proposed municipal and schools budgets in Jersey City. Jersey City’s proposed 2019/20 municipal budget shows that over $120 million in PILOT fees are expected to be collected in in the coming year. What is notable about PILOT fees is that they don’t contribute to the school tax. I wrote about abatements, PILOT fees, and the detrimental impact on the public schools back in 2015, but to quickly recap how it works: the City Council grants an abatement to a developer, who then constructs a building. Then, rather than the building paying ...
As we look towards the coming weeks and months, two local governing bodies are undergoing a public budgeting process: The Board of Education will be determining the 2019/20 schools budget. The city of Jersey City will be determining the 2019 municipal budget. A key question is: how can taxpayers engage? How can we peel back the layers to better understand how our government is operating, and serving our common interests in community? A budget is one good place to start. How a government spends its money helps gives insight into its priorities. I recently provided a high level visualization of ...
How to use this visualization: This bubble chart shows 2017 actual spending within Jersey City's public schools, as reported by the 2017 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report ("CAFR"); 2017 is the most recent year available for this report. The CAFR is an annual report detailing both qualitative and quantitative information about the district. It is prepared by the district, approved by the Board of Education, and audited by a private accounting firm. Purpose of this visualization: In my first visualization (which you can view here), I showed JCPS' largest "buckets" of expense categories on a district-wide basis as reflected in the ...
Governor Murphy released his proposed fiscal year (FY) 2019/20 budget for NJ and this week, and it included a re-allocation of state education aid. The impact to Jersey City was both expected and gut-wrenchingly sobering: a $27 million cut in “Adjustment Aid”, a type of excess state aid that Jersey City has been receiving for the last 10 years to make up for anemically low local revenues. For context, if you’re new to this issue: I wrote about these expected cuts several months ago here. I wrote a bit about the school tax levy in this post earlier today. I ...
This article is about Jersey City’s public schools funding crisis. If you’re unfamiliar with this issue, you can read more about it here. I’ve been attempting to de-puzzle some of the tax math that is vexing Jersey City with respect to its public school funding crisis, and have found three factors that deserve public scrutiny and understanding. Jersey City Public Schools’ “adequacy” budget Jersey City’s school tax levy The impact of inflation I’m going to share some numbers about these three factors, in the hopes to further the public dialog around this issue. This post is not so much a ...
This is a post in a series about NJ's User Friendly Budget. My intent is to share basic analysis and insights with community as a way to encourage taxpayers to engage with this document and learn more about local public finance. Read the other posts in this series here including how to access your town's UFB and the UFB's table of contents. In this post, we'll use the User Friendly Budget to gain insight into the ...
This is a post in a series about NJ’s User Friendly Budget. My intent is to share basic analysis and insights with community as a way to encourage taxpayers to engage with this document and learn more about local public finance. Read the other posts in this series here including how to access your town’s UFB and the UFB’s table of contents. The data I’ll be sharing in this series is compiled from 565 separate Excel ...
This is part of a series about the User Friendly Budget. This is a relatively short post to lay out what’s in the User Friendly Budget. I also want to share some of how I think this file can be used by taxpayers and advocates. As I explained in the first post in this series, the UFB is a file you can access either on your town’s website or through the NJ Department of Community ...
Five years ago, New Jersey began mandating that every municipality* in New Jersey file a “User Friendly Budget (UFB)” as part of the annual budgeting process. This file is “user friendly” for a few reasons: The data is aggregated in unique ways that help us see the structural nature of how the city both collects and spends money. The data contains details that are not available in other budget files. Examples include full- and part-time ...
In February 2020 the City Council introduced its 2020 budget (the city has typically approved the annual budget only in the summer / Quarter 3 timeframe — I don’t know the reason for the lag, only that the lag exists). Upon release of the budget, I converted the PDF into Excel and then uploaded to Tableau to create the visualization below. The budget document can be found on the City’s Financial Documents page via downloadable ...
LET'S DEMYSTIFY THE CITY BUDGET Learn about our $595M+ city (ie municipal) budget, in community To help taxpayers access the annual city budget, I've visualized it the 2019/20 proposed budget in Tableau, a data visualization software. Tableau puts the power of analysis in the user's hands; my hope is that YOU will dig into this budget data and feel empowered to engage, or perhaps more fully engage, the annual budgeting process. I've provided some initial ...
Every municipality must pay for services that are then consumed by its residents. These services include: Police force (eg the JCPD) Fire department Road maintenance for city roads (a note on roads...in Jersey City, Ocean Avenue, Eerie Street, and Manhattan Avenue are city roads, thus they are maintained with city funds...however JFK Boulevard is a county road, thus is maintained with county funds). One final thing to note here is that both the public schools ...
Every municipality is funded by a mix of income streams, including: Property taxes (everyone pays property tax...you either pay it directly if you're a property owner, or you pay it to your landlord. Your rent includes the cost of property tax) State Aid Local Revenues - these are user-fee income streams like marriage licenses, pet licenses, and so on Construction fees One thing to note about Jersey City is that it relies on abatement "PILOT" ...
NJ Property Tax Dashboard Follow the money ... and better understand your community's priorities. Every year, the state of NJ publishes property tax data on the Department of Community Affairs website. I have combined all the available data, for tax years 1998 through the most recently published data for 2018, into one tabulation and visualized it in Tableau. This dashboard is intended to provide taxpayers with a bird's eye view of their town's tax base, ...
This is a property tax dashboard for NJ residents who may be interested in learning about the property tax profile of their municipality, including: 1) Latest available (Tax Year 2017) property tax metrics available from NJ’s Property Tax portal. 2) Tax base growth chart from 1988 to 2017 – how has your town’s tax base grown since 1988? 3) Municipal, county, and school tax levy growth since 1988. How has spending on municipal, county, and ...