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Originally Posted by alphamale
I pay thousands of dollars in property taxes every year. I live in one of the lowest crime rate areas of the country - so the police, etc, budget is low. Other things that are city services elsewhere, like trash pickup, are paid directly by homeowners. So about 80% of the taxes goes to government schools. Almost everyone here is in the middle class and up. The question: why should I have to pay the education bills of middle class parents?
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My parents are in a similar position. They live in a small town in Connecticut which used to be a farming community but has over the past couple of decades transformed (some might say devolved) into a bedroom community for people who work in Hartford.
My parents are one of a handful of property owners left from the farming days who have more than a half-acre plot, and they pay exorbitant property taxes to support the local schools. The parents are extremely demanding as well: two soccer courts, two baseball fields, the whole overachiever facility package.
It's definitely unfair, I think. My dad is retired, my mom makes less than $35,000 a year, they're living on property that has been in the family for a hundred years, they have no children besides me and I'm long past school age and we weren't even living there when I was in school, they're witnessing the demise of the local classical yankee culture in favor of strip mall/soccer mom generica, and then on top of all that they have to pay thousands of dollars a year in property taxes to educate the children of people who make 10 times the income they do.
I keep telling my (Republican) dad he should run for local government.