Why Property Taxes Matter

For local communities, property taxes help create: 

• Better education
• Increased public safety
• Modernized schools and libraries
• Maintained roads
• Landscaped parks
• Equipped recreation facilities

Reducing or eliminating property taxes can have an immediate impact on your community.  These taxes help fund essential local services like fire protection, law enforcement, schools, parks, and recreation programs.  Without that revenue, communities may face service cuts, including fewer firefighters and police officers or reduced access to park and recreation programs.

• Local communities would have to find a replacement for property tax income
• Other available funding options could be less stable, less equitable, and increase income or sales taxes
• Lower quality education, slower safety response times, less-dependable sanitation and road work
• Communities may need to depend on their state capitol to meet their needs, giving up local control of services
• Less efficiency and more bureaucracy, less direct local oversight and more opportunities for waste or fraud
• Quality of life could decline as local government struggles to maintain public infrastructure and services

• Property taxes date back to the early 1600s in Colonial America
• Property taxes fund essential public services that benefit you directly
• Property taxes provide a stable source of revenue for your community