From the Star Ledger:
Here’s how much property taxes went up (again) in N.J. last year
The already steep property tax bill for New Jersey residents jumped again in 2015, topping $8,300 for the first time and increasing at the fastest rate since 2011.
The average residential bill rose from $8,161 in 2014 to $8,353 in 2015 — a 2.4 percent hike, according to annual data released Friday afternoon by the state’s Department of Community Affairs.
The state aggressively tightened the cap on local property tax hikes in 2011 after property taxes were rapidly rising for several years. However, the data showed the rate of increase in 2015 was higher than the previous three years.
For homeowners, the $191 average increase comes on top of what were already the highest real estate taxes in the country. Property taxes consistently rank New Jerseyan’s top concern.
The real estate website Zillow looked at median property taxes across the U.S. last year and found that seven of the 10 counties with the highest property taxes — Bergen, Essex, Passaic, Union, Morris, Hudson and Hunterdon — are in New Jersey. The remaining three were in New York.
Christie boasted in his January State of the State address that reforms he and the Legislature put in place helped cut the average tax bill increase under Corzine to 1.9 percent during his own tenure.
“We could do even better,” he said.
Of the 565 municipalities in New Jersey, taxes decreased in about 11 percent. Increases were less than 1 percent in another 9 percent, according to the state, which also noted that adjusted for inflation, the statewide hike was 2.1 percent.
…
Setting aside Atlantic City and Paterson, which lost nearly a third of its assessed property value after a revaluation, the statewide increase would have been 1.7 percent, officials say.
Gold, bitchez!!!
Not sure where this thread went yesterday – MIA.
Everyone talks about renewables, wind, solar, etc etc. But in the quiet back rooms there has been a revolution that blows all of that away. It’s playing out on store shelves everywhere, and nobody seems to care. No doubt this will make a bigger contribution to energy efficiency and the reduction of fossil fuels, than probably everything else combined..
From Slate:
Flicker Off, Flicker On
Good to see that Christie has been as ineffectual in campaigning as he’s been as governor. At least he’s consistent.
Should be entertaining to see how bad he gets walloped, even after spending the last few months as a resident of NH.
“Phineas Baxandall at the Public Interest Research Group said Reason’s method of measuring efficiency is sorely lacking.
“Purely a dollar per mile is going to be kind of a biased opinion,” he said. “The more urban you are, the harder it is to just pour tarmac and open roads, the more expensive it is.” States that are doing a decent job of managing their transportation systems might actually be rated very poorly by this report.
To access the full story, click here.
What’s unfortunate is that the flawed Reason Foundation report paints New Jersey’s construction industry in an unflattering light, despite data to the contrary and despite recent achievements, such as finishing the NJ Turnpike widening project (from Exits 6 to 9) $200 million under budget and competitive bidding for 2009 federal stimulus funding saving taxpayers $30 million.
If we as a state capitulate to this faulty data by defunding the Transportation Trust Fund or continuing to rely upon bond debt to pay for our roads, we’re only hurting ourselves. The current condition of the state’s road demonstrates that we already are. As President Ronald Reagan said, “The bridges and highways we fail to repair today will have to be rebuilt tomorrow at many times the cost.”
We need a bipartisan solution to the Transportation Trust Fund that is dedicated to infrastructure. Now. We invite New Jersey’s legislators, media and citizens to engage in a fact-based, substantive discussion about the state’s infrastructure. We need to put away the finger-pointing and the knee-jerk reaction. And we need to put away the flawed Reason Foundation report, because you can’t make a good decision with bad data.”
http://www.nj.com/elec/2016/01/you_cant_make_a_good_decision.html
“Altogether, the Reason Foundation study overstates New Jersey’s annual highway spending by at least $1.8 billion, transportation officials said. That number excludes debt payments on NJ Transit and local road projects.
“It really drives me crazy,” Jack Lettiere, a former state transportation commissioner, said of the Reason report. “It’s deceiving. It’s misleading. These people don’t have an understanding of the business … it’s misleading … it’s not an accurate description of what’s happening.” “
Enough with the govt bashing. This shows that they are cutting everything, yet people still bi!ch. Only 1.7% and people are still complaining? That’s pretty damn amazing since there seems to be claims of massive corruption blowing budgets through the roof. Show me a private company able to keep the budget at 1.7% increase with rising costs that exceed that percentage by a lot.
“Setting aside Atlantic City and Paterson, which lost nearly a third of its assessed property value after a revaluation, the statewide increase would have been 1.7 percent, officials say.”
“NJ property taxes shot up in 2015”
Music to Pumps ears.
Shot up? Great wording to induce fear in naive individuals. What is their definition of shot up? I ask this individual, how can taxes remain flat or go down with yearly cost increases? My town might be facing an 18% hike in health insurance costs. It’s great to want flat or lower taxes, but in no way realistic. Logical thinking tells you why taxes increase every year. Cost of doing business does not go down. That’s why infrastructure fixed today costs less than tomorrow.
Alex says:
February 7, 2016 at 9:43 am
“NJ property taxes shot up in 2015″
Music to Pumps ears.
LEDs are becoming mainstream. Recently saw an ad of 4 LEDs for $10. Unfortunately they were of the Feit variety which are not that great. BTW todays super bowl is being played at the 1st LEED certified stadium with some interesting sustainable design solution. (Yes leed has some credit offsets which are nothing more than buying your way in)
very interesting interactive income map on the bottom of the web page. I think this was discussed prior but not sure anyone posted the map. (Scroll down to the bottom to run the various scenarios)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-income-ladder-location-matters.html?hp&_r=1
Nothing more than a talk about fixing the game.
“Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said he held “successful” talks with his Venezuelan counterpart about ways of cooperating to stabilize the crude market, without saying what steps producers should take to shore up prices.
The two ministers, who met on Sunday in Riyadh, discussed Venezuelan Oil Minister Eulogio Del Pino’s recent discussions with other crude producers and the results of those meetings that seek cooperation among suppliers to bring stability to the market, the Saudi ministry said in an e-mailed statement. Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, the biggest exporter, are both members of OPEC, which supplies about 40 percent of the world’s oil.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-07/saudi-venezuela-oil-ministers-hold-successful-talks-on-market
7. Donkey, when the entity’s expense is already at the 99.9 percentile it better have de minimis increase at worst and ideally a decrease
” Show me a private company able to keep the budget at 1.7% increase with rising costs that exceed that percentage by a lot”
LED
Had a pitch for one of the businesses by an LED company that manufactures the lighting for aircraft carrier decks. Lights come from 3″ to 36″ square for commercial purposes, encased the same way. We plugged them in with the rep, took lumber, a baseball bat, anything we could find and beat the sh1t out of them. No damage.
The light is great, but while closer to incandescent than some flourescent it is different. Plugging them into one room, recently repainted white with fresh clean walls, exposed a ton of stuff under the paint (some pretty inappropriate lol).
Also, the ‘spray angle’ is narrower meaning you need more to illuminate the same area.
Anyway, they were so impressive (and not that expensive) that although we are not at the point of retrofitting our building I told him I would be calling him as soon as I bought another house. No reason to not hardwire them in rather than cans.
A Chicago police officer who fatally shot a black 19-year-old college student and accidently killed a neighbor has filed a lawsuit against the teenager’s estate, arguing the shooting left him traumatized.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/cd8011f50fd44ea59fde4a1e797c5ee2/chicago-officer-sues-estate-teen-he-shot-claiming-trauma
Where most others are scrounging for less than single digit gains in efficiency, we now have LEDs that use 10 times less power. Not 10%, 10 times.
LED spectral tuning is getting better to, in a year or so we will have LED with color rendition that will make incandescent look like you are living by fire light.
Was talking with some reef aquarium guys running fancy LED cans, 65watts and they put out more usable light, in the right spectrum, than my 400 watt metal halides … And metal halide are much more efficient than incandescent. Equivalent incandescents would probably be 1000 watts+, and the spectrum would be all wrong.
Down the road the Christie cap will be viewed as a failure and I think his entire governorship will be viewed the same way. Keep in mind Christie eliminated the rebates. I hate the rebates because they’re just a tool for politicians to pander but eliminating them provided a cushion to ease into the BS cap.
Now I suspect that cushion has been depleted so I expect > 2% increases to be the norm going forward. With all of the loopholes the cap has it’s not inconceivable to see %5+ increases again.
Installed about 20 led lights in the ceilings when I first got my house. Originally the brand I was buying on sale wasn’t dimable so I saved them for the two lights that were on an old fashioned dim switch. Electric consumption was easily down over $10 a month immediately. Those gains have been fully realized in under 2 years.
Whether is a failure or not who cares. Last night was a classic Christie Jersey spanking to a glorified Miami Dade republican machine hack.
Last night reminded me of https://youtu.be/CFAnaixvZFY
Seriously, Christie looks like he’s looking for employment opportunities in the next GOP “establishment” administration, if one ever gets elected, as the hired muscle/bully enforcer. He would make a good Roy Cohn like bully VP, cabinet level person, or executive staff person.
#9 pumpkin: still amazed that you have all this concern for the everyday man and woman. Income inequality no to low raises a d yet you are still perfectly fine with high taxes. Amazing!!
#20
It’s a shame for NJ that Christie decided he was too big for NJ and set his sights on DC. Prior to that, I think he had the ability to make a lasting difference here. Instead he decided he wanted to make himself into a more appealing national candidate and started moving toward the middle at every opportunity. Too bad for him he cost himself a chance at the primary in the process.
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I like the comparison of Fat Boy to Roy Cohn.
I think the complete opposite of some other people. Some don’t give a damn about income inequality, or giving people decent wages, but when it comes to their selfish needs, they are all for lower taxes.
You can think taxes are a waste of money, but they are for the good of society. Yes, some is wasted to corruption, but like I always point out, what institution does not become corrupted by human nature? Anything they touch, they corrupt. So take away all the govt services, lower your taxes to support a min govt, and then get raped by the private sector when it comes to paying for these services that were once payed for collectively as a society.
Garbage, you will get raped. Roads, you will get raped. Parks, you will get raped for access (you know how much the private sector charges for a soccer game in a bubble? God knows what they would charge to rent a whole outdoor field). Emergency services, you will get raped. Do you see how much a plumber charges for an emergency, now imagine for a health emergency or a security emergency. Man, if your son or daughter get kidnapped, good luck paying the costs for that in a private setting. Schools, you will get raped. The cost of education will sky rocket. Why? If it goes private, most poor will not go to school. The industry will be left to survive on a limited pool of customers. They will charge an arm and a leg for the best schools (easily close to 6 figures a year…think harvard costs at the high school level). The people not getting an education will slowly, but surely, destroy society over time with their lack of education and money.
All I’m saying, people better be careful what they ask for.
3b says:
February 7, 2016 at 5:40 pm
#9 pumpkin: still amazed that you have all this concern for the everyday man and woman. Income inequality no to low raises a d yet you are still perfectly fine with high taxes. Amazing!!
25- Remember, you have delbarton charging 35,000 while competing with a free alternative. Imagine if you take away the free alternative, what will happen with the competition at the top….easily 6 figures a year. If you want your kid to get a good education, you will wish you could have payed collectively for 20,000 per student per year through your taxes. Now the cost of education will be put solely on the backs of parents.
Is this the world of limited govt everyone wants? Yes, you pay almost no taxes, but you get raped at every turn by the private sector raptors on their relentless hunt for profit. The avg person will have less and the people at the top will have almost all if we turn to this type of govt/society of limited govt.
Latest Quinnipiac poll has Cankles ahead of the Bern by a mere 2%. Uh oh!
Michael, it’s not a private sector vs public sector argument for most people. Over the course of decades we were promised that if we just pay sales taxes, the money would go to school and we’d have lower property taxes. Then we were promised the lottery would fund schools…etc and so forth.
They are lying sacks of sh1t, and the money evaporates. The people responsible….(government officials) should be held responsible.
In that climate…why on earth would anyone…like yourself…ask for more of this?
In most states, the cities are teeming with businesses, generating growth and tax revenue….in NJ, this is completely the opposite and our urban centers are subsidized by state funds…many on the verge of bankruptcy (see Atlantic City or Camden’s failed police force…etc).
The cities are black holes where all of our tax dollars go to die in NJ. It should be the complete opposite…
D-Fens nails it. We all would be social1sts (well maybe not Rags) if the government was accountable. In most cases, the lack of accountability and oversight in the government is actually more wasteful than the profit motive in the private sector. And that is truly sad!
Joey D runs Essex County. He is a self-aware double dipper and chronic spender. He used our Essex County tax dollars (about 20% of your property tax bill) to build a fancy restaurant. His brother setup a health insurance pool to compete with the state’s health insurance pool. No conflicts of interest there. Hey Montclair, want us to put in a new playground in our park in your town? Drop the state plan and join my brothers. That’s what Montclair did.
Plump’s. Many of your theories are practical and make sense. But in real life, the government behaves in a more deplorable manner than the private sector.
Had my younger kids birthday at a local firehouse (non-volunteer). Guess what their work schedule is? One 24 hour shift then 3 days off. I bet those firemen are really responsive when the bell rings within the last couple of hours of their shift ending. It’s good to be in government.
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