Hellobee Boards

I figure you pay the school tax and have good public schools
or
no school tax and pay for private

I don't mind the school tax

I would yes, but we're talking about paying 6-8k vs 11-15k. And in the 15k town, you need to organize your own garbage pick up.

There are some towns in the area that have property taxes in the 30k range, so those are out of our league.

We pay 6K a year on taxes and have no problem with it. We'll have been paying taxes for 8 years before our kids goes to kindergarten.

Yes. 100%. And I say that even as a NY resident, our property taxes are among the highest in the nation.

Absolutely. My dad was a town selectman where I grew up and he did a TON of work on a proposal to invest in the school system that would require a tax increase. The town voted it down because was had a lot of older people who didn't have any school age children and failed to see that they would in fact benefit from the proposal in the form of increased property values. So short sighted!

I don’t mind paying higher taxes for better schools. Better schools benefit everyone, not just my family; feels a bit like a community responsibility to me. I also have an issue with charter schools for similar reasons.

It’s also economically advantageous for me to pay more in property taxes compared to private school tuition. The private schools we would be interested in that are local to us are all about $20k+ per year. My taxes won’t go up by $20k each year, so I’m still ahead.

Older/retired people who bitch now that their kids are grown about paying public school taxes really, REALLY piss me off. What a self-centered worldview.

We pay just over $6k in property taxes, which paired with local housing prices and average incomes that don’t support those prices is really at the top of what we can afford. My MIL pays $9k in property taxes and lives in a better school district 2 districts over. I would love to get into that district, but we can't afford to right now, or in the conceivable future.

We moved to a town with good schools but pretty high taxes (we pay around 11k) because we really value public education. Wish it wasn't quite so pricy though!

Yes, often from what I notice better schools happen to be in neighborhoods that are pleasing to the eye and offer nice amenities. It's just not the school I am buying into, but the rest of the community.

I don't mind it because it is what it is, but I wish that having good schools wasn't dependent on taxes.

@bluestriped bee: it will be interesting to see what happens once McCleary is finally implemented and they do away with local levies. I'm not really looking forward to having a kid in public school while they work out the kinks...

To answer your question, yes, I would. But I do know people who have chosen to live in lower-cost areas with less-desirable public schools because they always planned on private school anyway.

Well, in CA our property taxes are capped, but the school districts determine the property values. In the "best" district near, houses identical to ours (like, same builder) go for 2.5 times what we paid for our home and the city itself has tons of local assessments and fees and what not. Water and trash rates are probably 3 times what we pay here, the city sales tax is higher, so everything costs more.

Our home is in the next town over (5-7 miles away, depending on where you are), and the schools here are okay, but the cost of living is literally at least half the price. Like, it was cheaper to live here and send our kids to private school. So it was a no-brainer.

If we lived in Michigan, where DH's family is from, we'd be paying crazy high property taxes, but you get a lot services, like snowplowing, and the schools there are like palaces compared to CA schools!

Yes, we're not using the public school, but our area is very nice so we like living here!