thoughts on education cuts? (Pittsburgh, Sharpsburg: tax, living in, assess)

[gg]

Originally Posted by ML North

I am in the corporate world. Are you? Are you speaking from experience about anything, or are you guessing? .

I work for myself and used to work over 15 years in real estate as well as working in the restaurant industry. I think I am speaking of more experience than yourself. Try working for yourself for a while and you will understand how many hours that takes. Ouch. I don't need to guess about anything. Simple numbers is all I need. They are simple math that any moron can calculate. Teachers don't work a full year period. That is a fact. If you have a job that allows you that much time off and you are paid well, you better not leave it because they are amazingly rare, unless of course are working for your dad that owns the company.

Look at that breakdown of taxes I posted. It is insane!

[BrianTH]

I already said you can look at hourly compensation if you like. That should take care of the schedule issues.

You want better education, lets just start teachers out at $100K a year and have them get up to $250K. Seems that is what people want.

I don't want ANY arbitrary salary targets. The normal way to think about salaries is you should pay what you have to in order to get the kind of employees you want. If that ends up with teachers being paid more than average, I don't think that should be a surprise to anyone, but the point is to pay what is necessary.

I feel for the older set that are going to be thrown out of their homes because they can't afford the taxes. We have some of the highest taxes in the country already, but I guess they are now going much higher due to lack of state funding. Yahoo!

I agree we should stop wasting our efforts on issues like unfounded speculation about teacher salaries, and get back to the point at hand, which is that Corbett is trying to shove more education funding onto localities. And although our property taxes actually paid are not in fact as high overall as you are suggesting, that much school funding coming from property taxes is indeed a big problem, and we should be reducing that percentage, not greatly increasing it.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

I might have to tell them about this thread.

Don't forget to show them this, so they can get the real picture:

Pittsburgh's Future: Are Property Taxes High in the Pittsburgh Region?



Very close to Portland, in fact.

[ferraris]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Don't forget to show them this, so they can get the real picture:

Pittsburgh's Future: Are Property Taxes High in the Pittsburgh Region?



Very close to Portland, in fact.

You are probably both correct though, taxes as a percentage of income are fairly average, but as a percentage of property value they are pretty high.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by ferrarisnowday

You are probably both correct though, taxes as a percentage of income are fairly average, but as a percentage of property value they are pretty high.

That is correct. But complaining about the latter per se is basically complaining about how inexpensive it is to own a home in Pittsburgh. I'm not sure people in Oregon are going to be sympathetic to that plight.

But to be clear, there are a lot of problems associated with getting so many school revenues from local property taxes, even if the overall/average amount we pay in property taxes is pretty typical. It is definitely worth working on that issue, and certainly a bad idea to make it worse.

[squarian]

Does that article ever define what is meant by "Pittsburgh region" or "metro Pittsburgh"? I've read it through several times now, looking for a definition - am I going blind or is the author sloppy?

But whatever the definition, the median in a county like Allegheny, where property tax rates vary drastically almost street by street, isn't enormously useful. The median for "the region" is cold comfort to anyone paying at the extreme end of the range, and if this meaningless statistic is used as an argument to avoid change it becomes positively deleterious.

[Sideblinded]

Then They Came for the Trade Unionists

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by squarian

Does that article ever define what is meant by "Pittsburgh region" or "metro Pittsburgh"?

I assume by "Pittsburgh metro area" he means the standard Census-defined metro area.

But whatever the definition, the median in a county like Allegheny, where property tax rates vary drastically almost street by street, isn't enormously useful. The median for "the region" is cold comfort to anyone paying at the extreme end of the range, and if this meaningless statistic is used as an argument to avoid change it becomes positively deleterious.

I don't think the point of that piece was that any possible reform of property taxes in the area is unnecessary or unwise.

Speaking for myself, it is certainly the case that Allegheny County has a lot of unfairness in its current assessments--hopefully the reassessment will fix some of that. It is also the case that millages vary by quite a bit in Allegheny County--the only real fix for that is to move the funding those taxes are paying for to a higher level, which would allow a leveling out of tax rates. That could be through consolidation, shifting responsibilities, and so on.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I view it as inherently problematic if you buy an expensive house in line with your higher income and pay more in property taxes as a result. I'd prefer relying more on direct income taxes, but to the extent property taxes are just working as a proxy for income taxes, they are less problematic.

[squarian]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

I assume by "Pittsburgh metro area" he means the standard Census-defined metro area.

If so, I'd like to see what I would consider the actual metro area, Allegheny Co, compared to other real non-MSA metro areas - factoring in rural areas makes for an unhelpful basis of comparison, in my opinion.

I don't think the point of that piece was that any possible reform of property taxes in the area is unnecessary or unwise.

No, merely one possible implication.

the only real fix...is to move the funding those taxes are paying for to a higher level, which would allow a leveling out of tax rates. That could be through consolidation, shifting responsibilities, and so on.

Granted - which neatly moves the issue back to the state level and the dysfunction of the present structure of politics, since those sorts of changes can only be made there but in practical terms won't be.

[Sideblinded]

Remember when the teachers caused the global financial and economic crisis? Me neither.