Tuesday, August 26, 2008

The Great Garden State

Some of you have been to my house. It's not big. It's just under 1000 square feet and the lot is 25' x 100'. Now, those of you who don't live in NJ, you'd better sit down. Those of you who do live in NJ, you know what I'm talking about.

We got our estimated property tax bill today. For next year, we owe $4500+.

And what does this money go to? I don't know for sure. I suppose it goes to the schools, but I've got to say that the schools in our city aren't in the top 10% in the state. The services here in town are good, but $4500 for my house?

Can you imagine what it's like in towns where the schools are better and the houses are more expensive?

4 comments:

Barb Szyszkiewicz said...

Our tax $$$$$ at work.

Mine are going to pay for "smart blackboards" at the schools. The article in Sunday's paper featured a large picture of these--displaying 3 grammatical/spelling errors in a 2-word heading (in Spanish).

Maybe they figured that readers wouldn't notice a problem on a foreign-language lesson.

I don't know about you, but at least I get a school bus out of the deal. And with the price of gas, my kids better make sure they are ON the bus! (Hear that, Big Brother?)

christine M said...

As a fellow New Jerseyan I know exactly what you're talking about. It's mind boggling the amount of money we give to our towns. At least we got our street paved yesterday. :)

Anonymous said...

That is the exact reason why my aunt has a job as a nurse in NJ but lives in PA. She time-shares an apartment with some other nurses and lives there during her cluster and then goes back home for her days off.

But they usually wait until they are back in NJ to fill the gas tank.

Aimee said...

Oh My LORD!!!

Come here. Come here to PA now.