• LordCrom@lemmy.world
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    2 days 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

    • Quadhammer@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Dont forget increased pay for public servants who more and more act like they dont work for the public

    • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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      2 days 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%?

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      2 days 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.

      • bluewing@lemm.ee
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        2 days 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.