Great article on the history and illogic of 566

Article has a great point (0.00 / 0)

It's hard to believe that you can get both towns to vote for a merger when one of them faces higher taxes.  It would be good if this special session and the new sales tax money could be used in a creative way to support mergers, instead of just mailing checks to individual residents.


Frank LoBiondo Record and Jon Runyan Watch

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by: Hopeful @ Sun Jul 16, 2006 at 17:18:07 PM UTC

Hard to believe, indeed ... (0.00 / 0)

Long Beach Township, which consists of (I believe) four non-contiguous sections of Long Beach Island, is about to secede from the Southern Ocean Regional School district. Why? Because LBT is a seasonal community chockful of multimillion dollar homes, but has only 17 students attending Southern Ocean Regional HS in Manahawkin ... so all the real estate is being taxed to send 17 kinds to school. LBT's leaders believe it's cheaper to drop out of the district, impose a school levy themselves, and pay the out-of-district fee to send the kids to school. Good for LBT, bad for the other member townships, whose schools tax rates are at this time ameliorated by LBT's current outsized contribution ... Stafford, for instance, has a broad mix of people, but I think it's fair to say that summer residents are being replaced by seniors and families. Not good -- LBT drops out, SOR raises the school tax rate, and Stafford's seniors and parents fight it out at the ballot box over paying to educate the children. It's easy to see that placing the burden of setting, collecting and disbursing school funding should be at the state level -- why should any kid's education cost more, or less, than any other kids? but can you get the dogs to eat the dog food? This is where the first go-round of school tax reforms began -- when kids in Maplewood were getting individual Midori-style violin lessons, while ten miles away kids in Newark were getting bupkus. That was in, oh, 1978?

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by: denniscmcgrath @ Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 11:44:59 AM UTC

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