The local budget shouldn't change much from year to year, but when values go up, they are quick to reassess high on, many times, artificially inflated values. When values go down, then they aren't too quick to reassess accurately downward.
In this situation, you just end up displacing retirees which is not good.
I'm not talking about having special rules for retirees, just saying the politicians feast when home values skyrocket and cities need to have a reasonable balanced approach to be able to have great services and departments for the community, but not try to optimize for their budget.
So many great cities have been destroyed from high property taxes. They jack up prop taxes, then lose families and are left with mostly older citizens, and there's a breaking point and they leave.
Home values plummet along with property taxes. So what they thought might be good for the community ended up being a poor decision.
Also property taxes are not perfectly progressive. Only areas with nice homes have good schools.
The local budget shouldn't change much from year to year, but when values go up, they are quick to reassess high on, many times, artificially inflated values. When values go down, then they aren't too quick to reassess accurately downward.
In this situation, you just end up displacing retirees which is not good.
I'm not talking about having special rules for retirees, just saying the politicians feast when home values skyrocket and cities need to have a reasonable balanced approach to be able to have great services and departments for the community, but not try to optimize for their budget.
So many great cities have been destroyed from high property taxes. They jack up prop taxes, then lose families and are left with mostly older citizens, and there's a breaking point and they leave.
Home values plummet along with property taxes. So what they thought might be good for the community ended up being a poor decision.
Also property taxes are not perfectly progressive. Only areas with nice homes have good schools.