[CalKat]

I live in California and we have Proposition 13. Our property taxes don't go up (to put it simplistically). There are people here who live in $15 million houses and pay something like $10,000 a year in property taxes. But when Prop. 13 passed they cut a lot of school programs, like sports, band and summer school. So parents have to pay for that kind of stuff.

[netmilsmom]

WOW!
I'd pay for the extras if they would just educate my kids.
Now I pay property taxes and for the extras anyway. I would not trade it for the world though!

[Axenolith]

Prop 13 didn't hamstring the schools, there was a later proposition that devotes nearly half of the entire state budget to education. Then there was the lottery (Yea RIGHT) which was promised to schools but now goes to general.

A heck of a lot of those 15 million dollar houses are owned by people who had the misfortune of buying that house a LOT lower and without prop 13 would be held hostage by soaring realestate. I personally know of one aquaintance's parents who paid 68,000 for a house in 1968, listed it for 1.2 million in ~1998\99 and got 2.4 million for it in a bidding war. I'm sure they would have been forced out long before that without prop 13...

[Axenolith]

P.S. - Without prop 13 my property taxes would have gone from ~$2500\year in 1996 (on a condominium purchased then) to over $8000\year now. A state run by politicians as stupid and corrupt as here hardly deserve that kind of money to play with...