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Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you

LordCrom@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

So property tax I am ok with, in theory. The people with property in a city should pay for services like fire, schools, police, road maintenance… What gets me is when the city wants more and more for stupid shit like iPads for all students… Every 3 years due to forced upgrades or just old style deprecation over 3 years.

The amount my taxes go up each year is more than any raise I get. Then add on insurance which has gone insane. I paid off my house to avoid a 20k female flood insurance bill because a 1 foot piece of concrete touched a high risk flood zone. A technicality because if I took down a screen patio, then I wouldn’t have to pay.

It’s insane how expensive owning a house has become

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Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It doesn’t make sense that cities need to increase property taxes every year though

Property tax revenue should be increasing every year by default without changing the rate simply because houses and properties increase in value every year typically

If property tax is 5% and the town makes $100,000,000, the next year if property value increases by 5% then their revenue goes up 5% as well to $105,000,000 automatically. Why do they need to also increase the tax to 6%?

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boonhet@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

Every 3 years due to forced upgrades or just old style deprecation over 3 years.

iPads don’t deprecate in 3 years, nor require forced upgrades. They get nowhere near as much support as a regular Linux laptop (which is what schools SHOULD be using) and even less than Windows laptops pre-11, but if they’re being replaced every 3 years, that’s just policy, not an actual need. Currently the oldest supported iPad is going to hit 8 years since release in a month. The newest unsupported one is going to hit 9 in a month. So yes there’s forced upgrades, but that’s in like 8 years.

I work as a software engineer and most companies have had a minimum 3 year lifetime policy for company laptops. Reasoning being, after 3 years there’s a higher chance of failure, and there have been enough advancements in hardware that upgrading might save SOME dev time. If it fails before 3 years, you get a new one. If you want to keep it longer, you can keep it. But if you want a new one, it should be 3 years old first. I don’t get why school iPads need to be replaced this often, but I reckon there might be a lot more wear and tear and THAT could be the reason for a 3 year replacement policy. It’s simpler than just replacing individual units every now and then.

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- bluewing@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I have taught math for 4 years in my local school. The iPads were used by the 3rd and 4th grade students. And they never left the classrooms and were well supervised during use.
  
  Starting in 5th grade, they were issued Chromebooks. Google Classroom was used for assignments and other communications. And since Mommy and Daddy had to pay for them IF they were damaged, they held up quite well. The IBM Education model is very robust. Not fast, but robust.
  
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Cryophilia@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

I paid off my house to avoid a 20k female flood insurance bill

Female flood sounds interesting

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- m4xie@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Did they mean FEMA, and autocorrect “completed” it?
  
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  - LordCrom@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Somehow autocorrect made it funnier too
    
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Mataresian@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Yea generally electronics is depreciated every 3 to 5 years. But I can imagine that after 3 years of children usage they are done for. That aside though, I think what you would be more looking for is a fair tax system.

What I think that the problem with local property taxes is that if a city relies on it too much to pay for everything then this causes too many issues. For a poor city this could mean that if they don’t increase the taxes they can’t afford basic school care which people expect. So they moved to riched areas who can provide that. Or they move because of the higher taxes. This in turn lowers the property value and decreases the taxes further. Which in turn increases the problem.

So I believe the educational budget should be provided by the central government so the same kind of quality in schools is given nationwide. This can of course be applied to other costs a city is making.

In addition to this I think a property tax should be progressive and link to your overall assets. If you just own one house and you don’t have any more assets. Then why should you be taxed as much as somebody who owns a lot more (of course if the house is 2m and you’re living of social security it is a different story. L

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- thisorthatorwhatever@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Top down education doesn’t work, that’s how we get stuck with schools that have massive IT budgets with little to show for them. Most teachers don’t use anything beyond spreadsheets and Youtube.
  I don’t think that there is an easy fix.
  I’d like to think local autonomy would help, so small communities could design their own curriculum, but I’m too much of a pessimist and see such experiments failing quickly because of corruption and incompetence.
  
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- commander@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  Yea generally electronics is depreciated every 3 to 5 years.
  
  Not really.
  
  But I can imagine that after 3 years of children usage they are done for. That aside though
  
  It’d be cheaper to protect the devices with cases and screen protectors.
  
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Quadhammer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Dont forget increased pay for public servants who more and more act like they dont work for the public

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