In an editorial, Jersey City resident Kevin Bing delves into the dichotomy of keeping taxes stable while still making sure city services are running efficiently.

As a Hudson County View reader you are aware Mayor Solomon is proposing a 20%* tax increase to the municipal budget. This is bad news.

Combined with the board of ed and county hikes, I’ll be paying 16.2% more next year. That’s bad. I don’t want to pay that. (Update: We’re down to 15%. That’s good!)

Is the city doing anything about this? Sure, the new state budget gives us a $15 million grant (free money) and a $120 million loan (cheap money) from the state.

When that passes Trenton, that should ease the burden. The bad news is Mayor Solomon already budgeted for that – and still came up with the 20% increase.

Are we cutting spending? Yes. The administration has announced a $1 million cut to our parks spending, the end of the compost program, and cutting the VIA service – which provides cheap van trips across town.

I don’t like paying taxes, but I also don’t like these cuts.

Should we go deeper with the cuts? Maybe. Like I said, I don’t want to pay more taxes – but I’m starting to get concerned about all this cutting.

Sadly, increased taxes is turning Jersey City into an episode of Parks and Rec – where all we can think of is short term fixes delivered at maximum volume.

The list of ideas I’ve seen on social media have been – to put it lightly – really bad:

Cut right to counsel for tenants facing eviction
Stop paving the roads
Furlough city employees 
Give less abatements. 
Also, give more abatements.
Declare bankruptcy

There’s a lot of well meaning voices out there who – like me – don’t want to pay more taxes. But, so far, I haven’t heard a lot of well meaning voices with really good plans.

I personally like ticketing dangerous drivers with speed cameras and raising taxes through new ratables (big towers downtown pay a lot of taxes).

But I’m not going to BS you and tell you those solutions will show up in time for the next budget vote.

I don’t like the current plan – but it’s better than all the other ones out there. And in a democracy that’s the best you can expect.

I like a plan where the city pools aren’t closed one day a week. Or a plan where we accept that next winter it will snow – and that the roads will be plowed.

I like a plan where I can go to sleep at night knowing our children won’t be paying decades from now for a bankruptcy we took today.

We rely on our city services for our daily life. If you played SimCity you know, a wise public servant once said “YOU CAN’T CUT BACK ON FUNDING! YOU WILL REGRET THIS!”