Couldn’t that social upside be captured through means that don’t force people from their homes?

It seems like the use of property tax as a major local finding mechanism has a lot of negative effects, from poor school performance to inflated housing costs.

There's very little correlation between per student costs and performance. It's very common for urban schools to have very poor outcomes with very high costs per student compared to suburban towns with much lower costs and much better performance. The state where I live also equalizes educational funding to some degree.

Is your suggestion property taxes could go to zero without an impact on schools?

Regardless, it’s besides the point. The point is there are different potential mechanisms for raising money that don’t have the same second and third order effects of property taxes.

Obviously there are limits to state co-payments and towns also have expenses other than schools--although schools tend to be the majority from property taxes. But, in general, yes I think it's healthy to have significant local revenue pay for local costs. I really don't want the federal government to be paying for all local elementary and high school education.

I think there are valid concerns with an overly centralized funding point. But the counter argument to overly localized funding is that poor areas get less resources because they tend to have lower property values. I don’t think that’s a way to level opportunities.

The current system is a mix, however.

Its called a tax lien. Basically, if you can’t pay your property taxes, you still get to stay in your home, but the unpaid taxes must be paid (with interest) before the home can sold or otherwise transferred (with some rare exceptions for like death of a spouse, etc.)

I was referring to something different.

Property taxes are the way local municipalities raise funds. Tax liens are just the same property tax. I’m suggesting there can be other funding mechanisms, from VAT to income or even automation taxes that raise that money without the same tradeoffs.

Sure, you could charge people directly for services.

Want school? Pay for school tuition. Want roads? Pay the toll. Want fire service? Pay for fire subscription.

etc.

I'd be happy to live in such community but others want men with guns to come toss them out of their house if they don't have the money for the extra services. To me that sounds worse but to each their own.

Would you really though?That sounds like you'd just get nickle and dimed to death. Look at what happened with streaming services. It used to just be Netflix, but now that's but one service of many. So some people pay $100/month to get all the services, other people pick and choose, others have moved back to torrenting media. I dunno about you but it seems like things were better as a viewer when it was just Netflix and Hulu. And that's just for watching movies and tv. I can't imagine what it would be like if it was for critical things like the police. Actually, wouldn't a police subscription devolve with the existence of rival police departments, and then they'd actually fight with each other instead of chasing criminals? Or they'd come by your house and demand payment for the police and unless you paid, a thief might just happen to know your house was unprotected and burgle your house? The incentives under that system seem all sorts of perverse.

Fire subscription seems like it would only be workable in a barely suburban or actually rural environment, where your house burning down won't also catch your neighbor's house on fire. Anything more dense and the whole block would go up in flames, including your house, if one of your neighbors didn't pay and the fire department didn't immediately extinguish the fire in their house.