First place to start: police and multiple pensioners.

Consolidate towns, BOE county driven

This, too. School system administrations are bloated putting aside the redundancy.

Merge School Districts , Merge towns and Merge Counties and you will see a property tax decrease or slowdown... Do we really need 21 counties in this state or towns the size of a 0.5 square miles , or 686 school districts...or police department in every town...?

it sounds great until its your own district or your own police that are going to be merged. people will be NIMBY’s and i predict it won’t result in any significant tax reductions, especially when we always want more from our state government. they are more than happy to provide, but it comes at a cost. most people don’t mind paying a little more if it means (insert service here)

Short Hills and Montclair aren’t going to want to share services with Newark.. and Princeton won’t want to share services with Trenton. Camden County tried the whole county Police thing and now “Camden County Police Department” works almost exclusively in Camden City.

This is what Christie said he was going to do, then he shut his mouth (for once). It needs to be done, but no one has the political capital to do it.

Who said they had too...not every town and city needs to merge...but we have way to many in this state. Larger towns/cities like Montclair , Newark , Jersey City , Trenton , Washington Township (Gloucester), New Brunswick are fine the way they are but mini towns like East Newark , Guttenberg , South Hackensack , Teterboro , Bordentown city , Burlington City , Fieldsboro should merge into their neighboring towns/cities... That also applies to Counties like Salem > Cumberland , Sussex > Warren , Gloucester > Camden.

Then people shouldn't complain about high taxes...larger towns in Bergen County have lower property taxes then the smaller ones the difference is usually 3-7,000$.

Cost of living is one of the main problems New Jersey faces. It's long past due for our elected officials to do something about it.

Christie went nuts on a slash and burn binge through the state and he got strung up for running the government into the dirt. NJDOT and NJ Transit still haven’t fully recovered and they may never be what they once were. Lesson learned; if you want cheaper taxes, move.

I definitely agree to an extent.. I just think county wide consolidation would be hard to implement. But those pockets of small borough towns can definitely do some consolidation on top of having regional school districts

None of the proposals in the past called for every town to fold into one just the small ones and some of the small shrinking counties...

When it comes to the quality of public schools, there is literally no data that exists showing that higher property taxes/more spending correlates with better educational outcomes and plenty of data showing that there is basically no correlation. Massachusetts has similar if not better public schools and average property taxes there were more than 30% lower than NJ's in 2022.

This BS of treating ever-increasing NJ property taxes as a requirement for having good public schools needs to end because it's demonstrably false. We are a highly skilled and educated state so how have people here unquestioningly imbibed this garbage line of thinking?

In my town our middle school principal is also the vice principal and the IEP administrator. She collects 3 salaries. Drives around in a brand new top of the line Mercedes. It's all nepotism in this town and the only reason our schools are rated high is because they never fail anyone and just shove them through the system.

there are already unified school districts like Northen Valley with 2-3 high schools. I don't have an issue with towns merging as long as the people that live in them agree with it and it's not down from the state or counties to whitewash over problem areas

the average attached home in NYC is around $10,000 in taxes and homes in Westchester or Nassau are also about the same as NJ. in Nassau there are a few large towns that small towns pay them to provide many services but it's not cheaper. Same with their schools

I pay $16,000 in taxes in Warren County. 3/4ths of that go to the Hackettstown School system, which is still falling apart from what I'm hearing. What are they doing with all of this money?

How is that even legal?!

And there's the problem... Every town is its own kingdom. Local rule is killing us and yet you still want more of it even as the noose tightens.

Nepotism and corruption.

Paying overhead staff for ???

Other states basically manage everything at the state or county level for the cost savings. It works. There is no reason a town like “Riverdale” for instance, needs to exist. They have their own government, all the overhead that entails, a school system… wtf why?

Shared services with neighboring communities (your county) means same level of service, lower management costs, lower property management costs, less overhead.

but NJ isn’t other states. i am not sure how such a radical change would even happen. lots of people would be against it. i am skeptical it could even be pulled off

Well if costs go any higher they are going to either be for it or be priced out of living here. Home rule is BS.