Giving or Taking - paying for schools and childcare
From: C2pattee (C2patteeaol.com)
Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2001 15:39:05 -0600 (MDT)
We are non-parents, most of whose property taxes goes to pay for the
local public school system. While I believe that having an educated
populace is a benefit to the whole society, parents or not, it still
irks me to have to pay ever-increasing taxes for other people's kids
to go to school. People who have 4 or 6 or 8 kids expect everyone
else, including non-parents and parents of smaller families, to pay
for their kids' education for 13 years. In fact, I pay a
disproportionate share of school taxes, since I have no kids and can
afford a large house on a lot of land. Most of the people with kids
in the town have smaller houses/acreage and pay less than we do in
property taxes. Even though we derive an indirect benefit from
having educated kids, it still seems unfair that we foot more of the
bill than the people who derive the direct benefit (the parents).
Yet, we are happy to make charitable contributions far in excess of
our property taxes to educational bodies, when it's our choice to do
so. And when we think the money is well spent, which is another
issue!


This discussion of schools, child care and the disproportionate costs paid by people without children reminds me of my mother.  My family (four kids) moved frequently, and my parents would always make sure to buy a house in the best school district in the town.  It was an investment that paid off, as all of us have gone on to higher education.  However, when the nest was empty and my mother moved to a senior citizen's condo, what do you think was her main complaint?  All the tax money she had to pay even though she didn't have any kids in school!

There's another dimension to kids, cohousing and house size that I haven't seen mentioned so far.  Many towns are resistant to cohousing-style homes, i.e. small and clustered, because they bring in lots of kids and little tax money.  Greater Hartford Cohousing did some serious looking in South Windsor, a lovely town close to Hartford with some land still available.  We gave it up because everybody from the town planner to newspaper articles made it clear that the town did not want any more housing built, especially anything in the affordable (cheap=low taxes) range.

 Christine Pattee
Greater Hartford CT Cohousing
c2pattee [at] aol.com

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