The following is an ‘Ask The Mayor’ question submitted to TLS, and the Mayor’s response. Email your questions for the Mayor to [email protected]
Question:
Since there are so many new developments in Lakewood why is the property tax so high? And how can we lower it?
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Response from Mayor Ray Coles:
NJ has the highest property taxes in the nation, mainly because this is how we fund education in the state. It is a problem that will require creative & courageous solutions from the Governor’s office & state legislature.
Your local tax bill is split into 4 pieces Local, School, County & Fire. The School System gets approximately 50 cents of every dollar while the township gets about 30 cents.
The township portion of the bill provides Police & EMS protection as well as all the services provided by Public Works, such as garbage, snow & leaf removal as well as care of our parks & playgrounds
The township tax rate has been very stable for the past decade, including several years with no tax increase at all. We are always looking for better ways to provide services & keep taxes down, Next year will see the introduction of new Leaf Trucks, which will be able to pick up the fallen leaves much quicker, with just 1 person operating a single truck as opposed to the 2 truck, 3-4 man crews used in the past.
Regards
Ray
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Have a question for the Mayor? Send it to [email protected]
Very nice a few years the township hasn’t raise taxes but why hasn’t it gone down?
Very nice! Which leads to the next question. Private schools, funding, busing etc…….. nuf said.
If the town will be buying these new trucks to pick up leaves and as Ray said it will utilize less man power does that mean you will spend less on public work employees? Will you lay-off workers?
So nice that Mr Coles took time out of his busy day to answer the peoples questions. Very nice. Yes, I think the obvious next step is how the town majority can benifit from all the money we are putting into the school system.
The question is that the reason why the property tax in NJ is so high is because the houses have a lot of land and since each house has a lot of land there ar fewer houses in the township. in order for the township to raise the money that it needs is by charging a lot of property tax. However, Lakewood changed a lot and now there are a lot of houses without much priporty and therefore there are more houses. Shouldn’t the taxes go down now?
If .50 of every tax dollar collected goes to fund the school taxes, then with all the new homes being built that are paying taxes and not sending their children to the public schools, then why is the board of education not over funded and why can’t our kids get busing?