“Every parent wants class sizes as small as possible,” he said. “Most schools will not increase class sizes unless there’s a problem.
“There has to be a crisis for that to happen. So a lot of schools, if their enrollments were dropping, didn’t do anything,” Pfeiffer added.
“It didn’t turn the tap off,” Pfeiffer previously told NJ.com. “And so now we’re living with the decisions that were made years ago.”
New Jersey is famous for many things, but its nation-leading property tax rates usually top the list of resident grievances. In this episode, we sit down with Marc Pfeiffer, senior policy fellow, to demystify the complex machinery behind property taxes.
It’s “not the first time it’s happened in state laws where the Legislature has an idea, but the follow through execution is not well addressed,” said Marc Pfeiffer
“When some property values go up they eventually affect everybody, and that can result in gentrification and the loss of middle income homeowners,” Pfeiffer said.
“If you are a renter in downtown New Brunswick … somebody is paying property taxes in some way on the property you live,” Pfeiffer said. “Your rent is going to include some portion of the property tax bill so the homeowners can pay it.”
“Informed citizens make better decisions and ask better questions of their government,” said Pfeiffer.
“At a time when property taxes are a central concern for homeowners across the state, giving residents the tools to understand how their tax bills are calculated, what the money pays for and what rights they have as taxpayers is a meaningful contribution to civic literacy. Informed citizens make better decisions and ask better questions of their government,” said Pfeiffer.
Many towns with higher property taxes lack other revenue sources, such as businesses or corporate headquarters, said Marc Pfeiffer, a senior policy fellow at Rutgers University’s Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, who studies local government in New Jersey.
In a recent press release from Mayor-Elect James Solomon of Jersey City, Marc Pfeiffer, Senior Policy Fellow and Assistant Director of CUPR, was listed as the Chair of the Budget Advisory Committee.