Highly regressive taxes are the way even the nearly 100% Democrat gov’t here in so-called “liberal” California is doing business these days too. Parcel taxes – a property tax of the same $$$ amount for every parcel, irrespective of the parcel’s assessed value or acreage – used typically for funding local water & school systems are now very common. Even a condo is a parcel. Middle class condo owners pay the same parcel tax amount for their condo as the 40 acre shopping mall down the street.
The gov’t is getting a little kickback on this when it comes to applications for building rental units. A 100 unit apartment house is just one parcel so only pays one parcel tax. But it adds 100 families and their kids to the school systems. The schools of course, needing to figure out a way to afford to educate the new bevy of students, respond to this influx of students with more parcel taxes. And the condo and middle class property owners don’t like this scheme to place the entire cost burden on them at all, as you might expect.