May 8, 2007• (0) Comments
Physiologists say that a walker of moderate good health will traverse a gentle two-mile trail in under 45 minutes. That’s provided, of course, that she doesn’t stop to take in the scenery or to idle alongside a murmuring stream, distractions that occur regularly on the new public hiking trail at Natirar, Somerset County’s newest and most spectacular public park.
November 1, 2005• (0) Comments
Every summer like clockwork, Peapack-Gladstone municipal officials prepare an annual tax bill for property owners. Among other things, the bill tells us how municipal expenditures will be allocated in the next Borough budget and reminds us again of civic priorities for the year ahead. A helpful graph illustrates where our money is going, with colorful pie-chart slices staking out so much for schools, so much for emergency services, another bit for libraries, and so on.
Helpful as they are, what these bills don’t say are the reasons why our residential property taxes seem to go up every year. Nor do the charts tell us how one of the tiniest line-items, the local Open Space Tax first authorized by voters in 1998, is paying for itself many times over today by helping regulate those bigger chunks, the ones that represent our rising public schools tuition attributable to ever-higher enrollments and our costs of providing borough services.
September 4, 2004• (0) Comments
Sixteenth century French explorer Jean Ribault wrote of a favorite landfall that there is “…no fayrer nor fytter playce” and promptly dropped his anchors to tarry a while.
Something of that spirit must have inspired the Lenape Indians and later inhabitants to claim our own countryside, marked as it is by protective hills, riverbeds and rolling meadows. Even today, when demand for housing is exploding across America’s most densely-populated state and farmers cultivate more building lots than hay, sojourners in the twin boroughs experience a distinct sense of place here, that familiar impression of having arrived somewhere, of standing apart from places astern or places yet to come.
March 25, 2003• (0) Comments
Investing local tax receipts to improve public education benefits all homeowners in a community, whether they send children to its schools or not.
According to realtors, American homebuyers perceive a positive correlation between the quality of public education in a community and rising residential real estate values. From coast to coast, buyers agree that Good schools equal desirable neighborhoods equal sound investments. Arguably, many elements play in the determination of a locality’s real estate prices. These include macroeconomic conditions, proximity to workplaces, adequacy of residential housing supply and property tax rates, to name just a few. Nevertheless, after curb appeal or adequacy of space and amenities, the quality of a community’s schools ranks high among buyer influences.
Investing local tax receipts to improve public education benefits all homeowners in a community, whether they send children to its schools or not.
On the eve of battle, a single stone in my local churchyard reminds us that the residue of war will not be found in the speeches of our leaders, or the geopolitical reality of new maps, but in bleak stones on cold hillsides, far from the places where sons and brothers fall.
Taking building lots off-market through strategic Open Space spending turns out to be “tax smart” municipal thinking.