Most New Jerseyans are fed up with paying high property taxes but you're ever rising taxes are managed locally and leave no direct role for the governor or lawmakers to set rates that could raise cash to help fund everything from snow removal to teacher salaries.

Yet property taxes are looming large in the current state budget discussions as a formal legislative review process for 2024 proposed budget, a record setting 53.1 billion dollars, gets underway.

So where does property-tax relief fit in?

To break it all down budget and finance writer John Reitmeyer joins me.

John how much of this budget is helping folks with property-tax relief?

Yeah hey Raven.

The new budget when you think about it that that 53.1 billion dollars almost half so nearly 26 billion can be categorized in some way as property-tax relief.

So a huge number there.

Some of that is the 2 billion for direct property-tax relief program, the ANCHOR program and some of that is nearly 11 billion going to school aid for K-12 public schools in New Jersey which is considered indirect property-tax relief.

And so when you add it all up we've got funding for direct programs, funding for indirect programs, like that school aid which is supposed to ease pressure on local property taxes because local schools are funded through them and school boards rely heavily on property taxes to balance their own budgets.

Here's the thing John, you hear billions of dollars and it sounds like a lot but is it enough?

I mean a fifteen hundred dollar check may not be enough to offset the burden.

Yeah and that's a really good point that that fifteen hundred dollar maximum benefit under ANCHOR.

You know property taxes last year went up year-over-year to almost 9,500 almost, a little more than 200 dollars on average overall.

And so when you think about that in the context of the median household income in New Jersey such a big share now goes to paying just our real estate taxes.

And if you're a renter you know you're not escaping either because the rents that your landlords are charging you know that helps them pay the property taxes on the building.

And so we've heard Republican lawmakers, they're in the minority in both houses of the legislature, saying for certain more could be done not every school district is getting additional funding under this budget and renters may have fared better under prior programs like the middle class tax rebate that Trenton managed a few years ago versus ANCHOR.

And so that's all part of the discussions that are around this new budget that's come out.

And listen I get it you know, it's expensive but we also know it's important to note that our property taxes pay for a lot and those inflation costs that rose for consumers also rose for towns and cities.

Can you elaborate and explain why that's also important when we're talking about these high property taxes?

Yeah that's right and so we demand a lot of services from our governments in New Jersey.

We want those those roads cleared of snow and ice, we want small classroom sizes and those same high costs that we faced as consumers last year more than six percent year-over-year you know the the rate of increase in property-tax bills last year was just over two percent.

So maybe it's some solace that they were able to deliver all those services under that pressure at and and maybe a fair rate when you put it in the context of inflation.

And then I mean I have to ask are there politics involved?

Who is opposing this relief?

Well there's always politics in New Jersey especially around but this year especially because uh all 120 legislative seats will be on the ballot in November and so in many ways incumbent lawmakers will be running for reelection on the programs that are being funded through this budget.

Going out and telling voters how they're addressing their concerns about affordability and anyone who's challenging an incumbent lawmaker will certainly be criticizing and picking away at maybe some of the shortcomings that are in this budget.

So as you just heard no one way to solve this but there is another way you can help is by going out to vote it's going to be important.

John Reitmeyer thank you so much for joining us.

You're welcome.

Support for the Business Report provided by New Jersey American Water.

We keep life flowing.

Online at newjerseyam.com