brewster wrote:
Quote:

stateaidguy wrote:
EV is the market value of property in a town. It is calculated annually by the county tax assessor. If real estate sales exceed assessed values by 20% on average, the assessor multiples the assessed value by 1.2 to get Equalized Valuation.

EV doesn't include abated property. It only includes taxable real estate. (which might include land values for abated properties since land taxes are usually not abated.)

Aggregate Income is total income. I am not exactly 100% sure how this is computed. The people at the DOE I asked didn't know because the data is calculated by the Treasury, not the DOE.

However, The income of residents of PILOTed buildings definitely does count towards Aggregate Income, so if you want to make another anti-PILOT argument you could say that PILOTed properties slightly increase JC's Local Fair Share even though they pay no school taxes.

(JC's aid is determined by Adjustment Aid anyway, so, unless Adjustment Aid is reformed, JC's LFS is irrelevant to its aid total.)

The actual formula for LFS for 2016-17 is


(Equalized Valuation x 0.013156218 + Aggregate Income x 0.046185507)/2


The formula for LFS changes slightly year to year, so you can't compare a district's LFS from one year to another, but within a FY year, you can compare a district's LFS to another district's.

JC's LFS = $330 million.
Edison is #2, but its LFS is only $195 million.

So JC's tax base is 60% larger than the #2 town in NJ.

OK, that's certainly interesting that they use the personal income of the entire city population. But comparing tax bases without population seems irrelevant. JC's tax base is 60% more than Edison, but it's population is 250% larger, making it a much poorer city, if I understand the methodology correctly.

stateaidguy wrote:
EV is the market value of property in a town. It is calculated annually by the county tax assessor. If real estate sales exceed assessed values by 20% on average, the assessor multiples the assessed value by 1.2 to get Equalized Valuation.

EV doesn't include abated property. It only includes taxable real estate. (which might include land values for abated properties since land taxes are usually not abated.)

Aggregate Income is total income. I am not exactly 100% sure how this is computed. The people at the DOE I asked didn't know because the data is calculated by the Treasury, not the DOE.

However, The income of residents of PILOTed buildings definitely does count towards Aggregate Income, so if you want to make another anti-PILOT argument you could say that PILOTed properties slightly increase JC's Local Fair Share even though they pay no school taxes.

(JC's aid is determined by Adjustment Aid anyway, so, unless Adjustment Aid is reformed, JC's LFS is irrelevant to its aid total.)

The actual formula for LFS for 2016-17 is


(Equalized Valuation x 0.013156218 + Aggregate Income x 0.046185507)/2


The formula for LFS changes slightly year to year, so you can't compare a district's LFS from one year to another, but within a FY year, you can compare a district's LFS to another district's.

JC's LFS = $330 million.
Edison is #2, but its LFS is only $195 million.

So JC's tax base is 60% larger than the #2 town in NJ.

stateaidguy wrote:
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brewster wrote:
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stateaidguy wrote:
If Jersey City loses state aid it is to HELP poorer districts.

What metric do we use to determine which city is "poorer" in this context?

Median individual income?
Median Family income?
Property tax paid per capita?

A lot has been made of JC's development, but 3/4 of the city is still relatively poor by NJ standards.

SFRA does a pretty good job of evaluating a district's needs and tax capacity.

Needs is the Adequacy Budget. It is the enrollment with extra weights for poor kids, ESL kids, and then an extra multiplier for concentrated poverty.

Tax Capacity is the Local Fair Share. It is a hybrid that depends on Equalized Valuation and Aggregate Income.

If a district's Adequacy Budget is greater than its Local Fair Share it is supposed to get Equalization Aid.

If LFS is greater than Adequacy Budget it doesn't get Equalization Aid.

If Adequacy Budget is $60 million and Local Fair Share is $45 million, a district is supposed to pay $45 million in taxes and get $15 million in Equalization Aid. (In reality, chances are the district will not get $15 million in Equalization Aid.)

There are aids for sped, transportation, and security, but these are smaller streams and to keep things simple I won't address them here.

Ok, so JC has $21,661,162,459 in EV. It has $7,454,497,639 in Aggregate Income.

Put them together in the formula for LFS and you get $330 million.

And what is JC's actual tax levy?

$112 million

Now let's compare Jersey City to ... say BELLEVILLE. (just a random local working class example.)

Belleville's EV = $2,790,454,316. Agg Income = $916,370,877.

And Belleville's tax levy?

$38 million.

So are you kidding me when you tell me that you can't pay more in taxes when a town with a ninth of your valuation pays a third of your tax levy?

JSleeze wrote:
I reposted so it links to the absolute numbers - white kids raised by single parents are about 50% more than black. Percentages have nothing to do with it - if single parent households are the problem, as you seem to be suggesting - tough to really tell whether that is what you are saying or "I'm an ignorant racist" is what you really want to say - there is a much larger cohort of white kids in that circumstance and studying them would be informative. Other than saying "because I said so", you offer nothing to support your view that percentages matter.

stateaidguy wrote:
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JerseyCityNj wrote:
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JCGuys wrote:

And what about Hoboken?

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Wishful_Thinking wrote:
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JCGuys wrote:
With all the new luxury development going on in Jersey City... I'm left wondering when the Abbott district subsidies will end.

The luxury development boom is confined to one small area of Jersey City. You will not find any luxury developments in the Heights, where I live; you will see a lot of children in an area with low incomes though - http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Jersey-City-New-Jersey.html - and I think you would need to determine if the criteria from Abbott II still apply:

- must be those with the lowest socio-economic status, thus assigned to the lowest categories on the New Jersey Department of Education's District Factor Groups (DFG) scale;

- "evidence of substantive failure of thorough and efficient education;"

- have a large percentage of disadvantaged students who need "an education beyond the norm;"

- existence of an "excessive tax [for] municipal services" in the locality where the district is located.

The last issue has been much discussed/lamented on this board, I suspect it still applies along with the other criteria.

The majority of the kids in public school in Hoboken fit that criteria. A high percentage of public school students in that city are from the Projects, section 8 buildings and rent control buildings. The new residents to Hoboken for the most part send their kids to private school and very few have kids to begin with.

I always assumed that is one of the reasons why Hoboken never knocked down their Projects because it would hurt the school system. I believe HP is the largest in NJ and the only large cluster of high rises that hasn't been demolished or scheduled to. They have four 10 story, eight 7 story and about thirty 3 story buildings in one site, plus two more 7 story building at a separate Project blocks away. Applied housing also owns many section 8 buildings scattered through out the city as well. So while the average adult resident isn't poor the average school aged child is.

The numbers you have on Hoboken are out of date. In 2013-2014, the most recent year for which I have data, the Hoboken schools are only 49% FRL-eligible. This is only the 96th highest in New Jersey. FRL-eligibility is not the same thing as being in poverty either - you can be at 185% of the poverty line to qualify for reduced lunch and 130% of the poverty line for free lunch.

Less than 1% of Hoboken students are ELLs, an extremely low figure. The state average is 5%.

http://njeducationaid.blogspot.com/20 ... cally-hoboken-has-no.html

However, even if 100% of Hoboken students were in deep poverty Hoboken would still not economically be justified as an Abbott since its property base is so immense in relation to its student body.

Hoboken only has 2600 students, but its tax base is the 4th highest in NJ. In terms of tax base per student, Hoboken is twice as wealthy as Princeton and Millburn.

dtjcview wrote:
Quote:

stateaidguy wrote:
@dtjcview

...
Equalized Valuation is calculated annually by the county tax assessor and is supposed to be the market valuation of all the taxable real estate in a city. Equalized Valuation is used to apportion county taxes and school taxes in regional school districts.

...
http://njeducationaid.blogspot.com/20 ... s-of-new-jerseys-big.html

How do they get market valuations without a reval? EV is at best a guess - particularly if it's been 27 years since the last reval.

JerseyCityNj wrote:
Quote:

JCGuys wrote:

And what about Hoboken?

Quote:

Wishful_Thinking wrote:
Quote:

JCGuys wrote:
With all the new luxury development going on in Jersey City... I'm left wondering when the Abbott district subsidies will end.

The luxury development boom is confined to one small area of Jersey City. You will not find any luxury developments in the Heights, where I live; you will see a lot of children in an area with low incomes though - http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Jersey-City-New-Jersey.html - and I think you would need to determine if the criteria from Abbott II still apply:

- must be those with the lowest socio-economic status, thus assigned to the lowest categories on the New Jersey Department of Education's District Factor Groups (DFG) scale;

- "evidence of substantive failure of thorough and efficient education;"

- have a large percentage of disadvantaged students who need "an education beyond the norm;"

- existence of an "excessive tax [for] municipal services" in the locality where the district is located.

The last issue has been much discussed/lamented on this board, I suspect it still applies along with the other criteria.

The majority of the kids in public school in Hoboken fit that criteria. A high percentage of public school students in that city are from the Projects, section 8 buildings and rent control buildings. The new residents to Hoboken for the most part send their kids to private school and very few have kids to begin with.

I always assumed that is one of the reasons why Hoboken never knocked down their Projects because it would hurt the school system. I believe HP is the largest in NJ and the only large cluster of high rises that hasn't been demolished or scheduled to. They have four 10 story, eight 7 story and about thirty 3 story buildings in one site, plus two more 7 story building at a separate Project blocks away. Applied housing also owns many section 8 buildings scattered through out the city as well. So while the average adult resident isn't poor the average school aged child is.

JPhurst wrote:
Pre-K needs to be available for all. If you create means tested pre-K you will create poor quality day care. One of the main attributes of public education is to have students of all economic backgrounds learning together. Although we provide supplemental assistance such as free lunches and subsidized after-school based on means that is a far cry from making the entire pre-K program means tested.

For decades Jersey City families who could get their children out of the schools would. Whether it was through Catholic schools or a charter. We now have strong demand for pre-K from families of all backgrounds, and that is filtering up to the higher grades.

After the school district has worked for years to create programs that appeal to everyone, the last thing you want to do would be to turn it once again into a program only for families who can't afford anything else.

JCGuys wrote:

And what about Hoboken?

Quote:

Wishful_Thinking wrote:
Quote:

JCGuys wrote:
With all the new luxury development going on in Jersey City... I'm left wondering when the Abbott district subsidies will end.

The luxury development boom is confined to one small area of Jersey City. You will not find any luxury developments in the Heights, where I live; you will see a lot of children in an area with low incomes though - http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Jersey-City-New-Jersey.html - and I think you would need to determine if the criteria from Abbott II still apply:

- must be those with the lowest socio-economic status, thus assigned to the lowest categories on the New Jersey Department of Education's District Factor Groups (DFG) scale;

- "evidence of substantive failure of thorough and efficient education;"

- have a large percentage of disadvantaged students who need "an education beyond the norm;"

- existence of an "excessive tax [for] municipal services" in the locality where the district is located.

The last issue has been much discussed/lamented on this board, I suspect it still applies along with the other criteria.

JPhurst wrote:
Pre-K needs to be available for all. If you create means tested pre-K you will create poor quality day care. One of the main attributes of public education is to have students of all economic backgrounds learning together. Although we provide supplemental assistance such as free lunches and subsidized after-school based on means that is a far cry from making the entire pre-K program means tested.

For decades Jersey City families who could get their children out of the schools would. Whether it was through Catholic schools or a charter. We now have strong demand for pre-K from families of all backgrounds, and that is filtering up to the higher grades.

After the school district has worked for years to create programs that appeal to everyone, the last thing you want to do would be to turn it once again into a program only for families who can't afford anything else.

stateaidguy wrote:
@dtjcview

...
Equalized Valuation is calculated annually by the county tax assessor and is supposed to be the market valuation of all the taxable real estate in a city. Equalized Valuation is used to apportion county taxes and school taxes in regional school districts.

...
http://njeducationaid.blogspot.com/20 ... s-of-new-jerseys-big.html

JSleeze wrote:
I reposted so it links to the absolute numbers - white kids raised by single parents are about 50% more than black. Percentages have nothing to do with it - if single parent households are the problem, as you seem to be suggesting - tough to really tell whether that is what you are saying or "I'm an ignorant racist" is what you really want to say - there is a much larger cohort of white kids in that circumstance and studying them would be informative. Other than saying "because I said so", you offer nothing to support your view that percentages matter.

JSleeze wrote:
Quote:

JCMan8 wrote:


What I said has nothing to do with where I work or live, and I don't know where you got that from anyway. What I said is the truth, and it won't change no matter what you think of me.

Yeah, some other posters are right that "school is sometimes the only constant in a child's life." That's because when you are born to a single mother, as 80% of black children born out of wedlock, it is too difficult for one person to properly provide for and be there for her child. Everything stems from the home life. And a black baby born to a mother AND father that is there for him or her, has a much better chance of succeeding than one born to a single parent. The obvious conclusion is children born to two parents that stay together = better for all involved.

Too bad people still refuse to recognize the problem, and a ridiculous comment like yours is one response.

What do black kids have to do with it? You do realize that there are millions more white kids who are raised by single parents than black? Single parent data

JCMan8 wrote:


What I said has nothing to do with where I work or live, and I don't know where you got that from anyway. What I said is the truth, and it won't change no matter what you think of me.

Yeah, some other posters are right that "school is sometimes the only constant in a child's life." That's because when you are born to a single mother, as 80% of black children born out of wedlock, it is too difficult for one person to properly provide for and be there for her child. Everything stems from the home life. And a black baby born to a mother AND father that is there for him or her, has a much better chance of succeeding than one born to a single parent. The obvious conclusion is children born to two parents that stay together = better for all involved.

Too bad people still refuse to recognize the problem, and a ridiculous comment like yours is one response.

stateaidguy wrote:

Jersey City, objectively and relatively speaking, does not have excessive taxes in terms of taxes per equalized valuation or taxes per dollar of income. Jersey City's all-in, effective tax rate (county, schools, municipality, other entities) is 2.291, is just average for New Jersey. Jersey City's all-in taxes are low compared to most of the other Abbotts though.

DanL wrote:
sounds like you would be interested in reading this blog -

http://njeducationaid.blogspot.com

unfortunately it is published anonymously, so take it for what it is.

and particularly these posts (just search Jersey City) -

http://njeducationaid.blogspot.com/20 ... should-not-be-abbott.html

http://njeducationaid.blogspot.com/20 ... law-center-report-on.html

http://njeducationaid.blogspot.com/20 ... aise-their-own-taxes.html

http://njeducationaid.blogspot.com/20 ... cally-hoboken-has-no.html

Wishful_Thinking wrote:
Quote:

JCGuys wrote:
With all the new luxury development going on in Jersey City... I'm left wondering when the Abbott district subsidies will end.

The luxury development boom is confined to one small area of Jersey City. You will not find any luxury developments in the Heights, where I live; you will see a lot of children in an area with low incomes though - http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Jersey-City-New-Jersey.html - and I think you would need to determine if the criteria from Abbott II still apply:

- must be those with the lowest socio-economic status, thus assigned to the lowest categories on the New Jersey Department of Education's District Factor Groups (DFG) scale;

- "evidence of substantive failure of thorough and efficient education;"

- have a large percentage of disadvantaged students who need "an education beyond the norm;"

- existence of an "excessive tax [for] municipal services" in the locality where the district is located.

The last issue has been much discussed/lamented on this board, I suspect it still applies along with the other criteria.

JCGuys wrote:
With all the new luxury development going on in Jersey City... I'm left wondering when the Abbott district subsidies will end.

dtjcview wrote:
Quote:

JCMan8 wrote:
Quote:

dtjcview wrote:
JC and Hoboken will lose Abbott status when NJ comes up with something better. And that should be based more on student outcomes and not about who pays - 2 areas that have been spectacular failures of Abbott.

Reality: as long as 80% of black kids are born out of wedlock, to largely single mothers, student outcomes will never ever improve. A massive cultural shift is needed, yet people still refuse to acknowledge that this internal problem even exists.

So throw all the money you want at the problem, engineer all sorts of different funding schemes, unless the nuclear family model begins to rise in the black community, student outcomes will never change. And people can scratch their heads or blame outside forces all they want.

JCMan8. You're a cop right? You don't even live in JC. Can't take you seriously.