In a letter to the editor, Jersey City resident Jonathan Schwedel explains why he feels city homeowners should be paying higher taxes to help fix a massive budget deficit.
Dear Editor,
Every single day, there is seemingly a new headline about fiscal woes at the state or local level. Gov. Sherrill just gave an address where she bemoaned inheriting a structural deficit from her predecessor. Mayor Mamdani in New York City recently did the same.
Municipally, the same phenomenon is happening in all corners of our state, sparing neither rich, nor poor – Jersey City, Newark, Lakewood, Montclair, Hackensack, Jackson, Jefferson, are among the the many towns and/or school districts publicly bemoaning challenges with balancing their upcoming FY budget.
There are many recurring themes that keep popping up in these discussions. Legacy pension costs, dramatic Medicare/Medicaid cuts by the federal government, growth in insurance premiums, losing pandemic aid, and health care plans struggling to cover expensive drugs like GLP-1s.
It’s absolutely within reason to argue that no town can solve these problems alone, and urgent action is needed at the state level to find policy solutions that work for everyone.
Given the widespread pain visible over the horizon, it’s hard to imagine the plight of Jersey City will garner much sympathy from the rest of the state, or within the back rooms of Trenton. Our city is home to stark wealth disparities.
We have an underserved population with very real and urgent needs, comparable to the poorest parts of our state.
Clearly, we have many levers those towns lack – a waterfront and historic districts full of millionaires, and a much greater ability to generate new revenue should we so desire.
While we do not have mayoral control of schools or their tax levy – we must distinguish between high tax totals and tax rates. While total bills in parts of Downtown are comparable to Short Hills or Alpine, Jersey City actually maintains similar or lower effective tax rates than many suburbs.
However, these lower rates are being calculated against extremely expensive homes that have appreciated at staggering rates.
Couple that with a tax reval that is now dangerously out of date (placing an undue burden on homes outside of downtown), and it doesn’t seem like much of an ask to roll local property tax rates back to their 2021 levels.
Isn’t that the entire point of progressive politics – that the wealthy need to pay their fair share?
We also have a superpower unavailable to our neighbors – we can actually grow our way out of the problem.
We know that empty lots downtown like 150 Bay St. would generate millions in net revenue for the city were they to be developed.
Now that the campaign is over, we need to look past slogans and rhetoric, and make careful decisions for our future fiscal health.
The same goes for sales of land and other assets. Yes, we should look at these with a careful eye – but if a project would enable a huge increase in future ratables, it’s an easy win-win for the city’s balance sheet.
Let’s face it – a bailout from Trenton isn’t coming – the only way out of this hole is if we pick up shovels and start digging ourselves.
Jonathan Schwedel
Jersey City resident
The corruption is unbelievable. Both Fullop and Bhalla burned the house down on their way out. In Bhalla’s case it was so he got elected to the Assembly. He gave out ridiculous raises to the police and fire. Jabbour who voted for all of Bhalla’s BS has no choice but to open those contracts back up. She has to get rid of all the BS positions that he created and I think that the city needs to act on poor performing employees. Remember Andriani? Years and years of bad behavior where he could have been fired and they did nothing. That’s just an example. We need to change the laws to make it easier to fire dead weight. We need consequences for what Ravi did. The county does the same. Spend spend spend
Developer nonsense about new rateables will fix the problem with ne’er a mention of the cost of new rateables to the taxpayer from new massive development. More cops (expensive) more firepersons (expensive) more flood mitigation etc.
New high rise developments are both tax dense (pay a lot of taxes) but don’t consume many city resources (you don’t really need to hire more cops and firefighters for each new building) and usually improve infrastructure, particularly around flood mitigation and stormwater retention.
The author clearly thinks that people are stupid. They want to sell the city to the highest billionaire bidder even more than the previous administration did. We should absolutely tax the rich, but trying to wrap their developer bootlicking into “progressive politics” shows how they treat leftism like a costume rather than a coherent ideology.
Jersey City is broke because of OVERSPENDING not under taxing. Time to cut budgets and eliminate no show jobs. Stop the insanity or runaway spending !!!!
You can’t just “roll back tax rates”.
Lets understand the irreaponsible politicians with little to know finacial wherewithal piss away the funds and some imbecile feels hars working wealthy citIzens should pay for these tragic errors made.by the politicians.
If you where a stockholder and Jersey City was a public company would you demand an investigation into there behavior?!?!?
Wake up
I have never read a dumber article, honestly. Why don’t we stop with stupid and ridiculous bias proposals. Why not come up with an actual workable plan? — instead of a wing and a prayer approach. Mr. Schwedel does not have a clue as how to solve a problem. What is wealthy? How are you going to try and monitor that – by asking for everyone’s tax returns? Great! Or by saying so-and-so owns a building, so he must be rich – after all that person only put his neck on the line to borrow the money to build it, but more than not has a mortgage that will choke a horse — and then you can add the ridiculous JC taxes that are paid on said building. I have no idea who the author is or what he does for a living, but he sure as hell should not be creating more problems and lawsuits for the City.