beowulf92

beowulf92 t1_jecxppy wrote

Last dude that came out to me and asked to see my bill was so fucking offended when I told him no thanks lol. He was like hey I'm from MPower, we're doing follow-ups, can I see if you're getting the best rate? I said oh you're them, no thanks I'm good. He was like excuse me??? I said yeah thanks never told you guys to come back, goodbye. And I could see him fuming as I shut the door.

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beowulf92 t1_jadr7xa wrote

People are definitely part of the problem. Adult communities could certainly help too, but without a consistent aging population to continually move in to keep those communities filled, there's now just excess housing stock limited by age that's going to inflate property values, because we didn't build enough housing for everyone, and there's fewer people paying taxes on the necessary budget for the municipality, so taxes across the board will need to rise to make up that difference. The average birth rate continues to fall, so that situation is going to happen sooner or later no matter what, unless there's a massive influx of elderly people relocating to the state, but they typically do the opposite and leave here.

People having fewer kids means people moving into communities aren't having the same strain on schools as they used to. But the more people that move in, the more people that can be taxed to pay for the increase in services. When the density being thrown up is nothing but hundreds and hundreds of units of rentals, yes that hurts in the long run, but increase the density of tax paying citizens in addition to rentals, attract non-residential uses in close proximity that can serve them, and those too get taxed to reduce the tax burden on residents. Infrastructure costs will drastically scale down for the greater the population they are being built/improved for.

Free birth control and vasectomies etc. is definitely an interesting idea that could help some areas of the country/world that don't have the educational infrastructure to sustain the growth. Not this state though I'd argue. We don't have wild rates of unexpected pregnancies driving population growth, and we luckily have ample access to family planning resources including abortions, pills, etc when necessary for an accidental pregnancy. I understand your thought process, but it wouldn't do anything for our state.

Home Rule and awfully managed land use and zoning decisions are what need to change. Anything people based will fail once the demographics it was based on change. A systematic overhaul of how growth/development/redevelopment occurs and adapts to changing demographics here is very much needed for long-term change here.

Thanks for the convo! Always good to hear differing opinions.

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beowulf92 t1_jadajjb wrote

Property values go up, taxes go up even if the percentage stayed the same or went down if values went up enough. Build more dense and affordable housing, bring property values down as unpopular as it'll be, build the commerical uses necessary to sustain that dense housing where it's possible to lessen the burden on 100% resident funded taxes. Everywhere needs to consolidate government services and get over this fascination that we need 560+ individual service providers for everything facet of government. Madison, Morris, Florham, and Chatham I believe all have a joint court system and split the cost rather than each paying its own entire court system. Police can certainly cover multiple municipalities outside of cities and large townships. Many school districts can get consolidated to get rid of administrative bloat and all those leech superintendents. Rural communities that refuse to build denser and mixed-use areas for good reasons in many cases better get on the consolidation train if they want taxes to go down. People are going to be laid off and property values are going to come down, but that's how you'll create sustaining tax decreases across the board imo.

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beowulf92 t1_j9h2754 wrote

While that's certainly possible, then you'd see this same scenario occurring all around the world where sonar is used for mapping around shipping lanes and whale migratory paths. Now I don't keep up with any news with stuff like that, so maybe it has been witnessed before, but I personally would need to see this scenario being seen elsewhere to truly be on board that sonar right now off our coast is to blame. There could also be a litany of other factors around our shoreline specifically that could be attributed to it too. Cleaner waters than we've had in the past could be leading to a healthier ecosystem with more fish and shrimp-esque organisms the whales will feed on, drawing them closer to shore and into shipping lanes. I've also seen theories of disease circulating around populations off our coast, which of the organisms are tested and that's found to be the case, would be a factor then. It should certainly be looked at, and if proven to have an actual correlation with the sonar, then yes it should be addressed. I haven't looked at any data, but if there's been an increase in beachings over the last several years preceding any mapping occurring, then that would point to something else being a cause as well.

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beowulf92 t1_j8xzvpi wrote

The one in Hanover is wack. Simply because returning anything there seems to be impossible. At least it was for a while. I went in to return something last year and the woman was like, Nope. Customer service is closed. So I said, I can't make a return at all today? So when? And she was like idk but not today (mind you it was a Saturday or Sunday). Said whatever and went to check out and I asked the cashier if they could do a return by any chance. The answer was yes they can, and they did. No big deal, shit happens maybe a bunch of people called out and so they didn't have staff door customer service. Fast forward to the next several times I've gone there, I've overheard the same exact scenario play out with people with far less patience than I have unfortunately. That and I've been there so many times where the self-checkout line wraps all the way to the wall and up that aisle because there's maybe 1 cashier open.

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beowulf92 t1_j638iqu wrote

Oh shit, didn't know that about target eggs! I gotta check mine out this weekend. We usually get our cleaning supplies from Costco and they last forever for just the 2 of us so I never really did number crunching on those prices and don't take advantage of all the Target deals I see pop up like that. Gonna have to start paying more attention to those too lol

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beowulf92 t1_j61l1c5 wrote

Yeap! Same as the other commenter. Watch for sales and buy frozen or canned vegetables to fill gaps when needed. Mostly kale, spinach, broccoli, peppers, bananas, apples, oranges etc. Whatever type of apple is on sale at the time. Buy all store brand stuff for the most part too. The farmers market on 46 in Totowa is also great for cheap produce.

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beowulf92 t1_j61idvr wrote

This is how we do it! Eggs are obviously way more expensive now, but we never used more than a dozen in a week so it's not breaking the bank now, and the only other thing I buy regularly that is super noticeably more expensive than it used to be is oat milk. I think focusing on sale items and buying in bulk at Costco really has helped keep us in that same range.

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beowulf92 t1_iu1l6vl wrote

https://www.nrdc.org/flood-disclosure-map

There is no legal requirement in the state specifically for floods. I know a lawyer that has had homes go to the point of the buyer not knowing they'd need flood insurance until the mortgage lender comes back and tells them it'll be needed. Our flood data in the state is old and antiquated and that makes everything worse. Some things show up in the floodplain on the data, that actually aren't in it, and others show up outside it that really should be in it now. I can be as dodgy as I want about the severity of any flooding I've gotten in the past to make it seem not nearly bad enough for a prospective buyer to overlook the issue. I've seen it happen, and it's happened to my mom when she bought our house when I was younger.

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beowulf92 t1_iu1jmzx wrote

That happened to my mom in the early 2000s, they told her oh yeah it barely floods, just get the insurance don't worry. Yeah, 200 ft from the Passaic River isn't, "barely floods" - we moved right before the March 2010 floods and my mom told the guy, don't put anything in the basement, a flood is coming. He said, yeah sure lady, whatever. And about 2 weeks later, water filled the basement and went up the the first floor for the first time. Irene the next year put I believe 7 ft of water on the street.

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