When my spouse was a teen his parents (now both dead) got some friends to fake an address so he could go to another high school in the city where they lived. That was address fraud. The practice is sometimes called residency fraud, but since his parents were in City X, CA and paying City X property taxes, they were residents of City X, let’s go with address fraud.
I’m not going to write about Maryland residents sending their children to DC schools. That’s another rant for another day.
No instead of going back in forth with some stranger on X about property taxes and if they actually go up every year due to assessments, I’m going to create a post. Feel free to fight me.
I don’t blame my dead in-laws. They were paying taxes for all the schools in their city, regardless if they were using them. People without kids pay property taxes which may (depending on the jurisdiction) pay for schools in that jurisdiction. To my knowledge, people in Hillcrest are paying taxes that support schools in Foxhall.
I’m in PG County and my ginormous tax bill tells me how much is going to PG schools. Compared to what goes to parks and rec, not much. Parks and Recreation get over a thousand dollars of my tax bill whereas the schools get less than a couple hundred. I think I get my money’s worth. Got some nice bike trails that kinda go places I want to go and my kid’s in private school. Seriously, no one moves to PG for the schools. And 2K goes to never having guys on the corner selling heroin.
I have heard over and over property taxes are linked to the schools. As I wrote, a small portion goes to education and we’ve got an excellent elementary school. The high school sucks, but there is a nearby charter and another specialty high school up the road that works as an alternative. All for less than $200 a year in taxes.
My aunt lives down the road from me and pays less in property taxes for her condo. Because it is a condo, not a real house. Her tax dollars goes into the same PG Co. pot. I have no idea of the quality of her neighborhood school. It’s PG County, whaddya want?
I’ll end this here by saying. Urban and suburban schools can supported by different tax groups because they could be in different municipalities. Next time someone says the property taxes in one part of town supports the nice school but not the poor school in the poor part of town will need to show that the municipality doesn’t just throw all the tax money in one big pot.