Same problem in NY state. Your dad's property tax (12000/450000) was $26.66 per thousand. That high compared to rates in North Carolina and Tennessee , but it's low compared to upstate NY tax rates. Our counties pay for Medicaid, which means poor counties with more people on Medicaid end up with very high property tax rates.
This is a few years old, they're about 6-10% higher today.
http://www.empirecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/PropertyTax2013.pdf
New York's highest was Binghamton at $58.28. That report breaks down top 20 rates by region, all of them are in excess of $32 per thousand. Practically, what this means is that younger families cannot afford to buy a house here and older folks cannot retire here. There's a well documented youth flight out of the state. Businesses can't get younger workers, or afford the property taxes, so they leave for states with better deals or negotiate tax abatements, which requires governments to fundraise from people who haven't left yet, and that accelerates the process. All of this suppresses property values.
We won't see progress on this front until state and local governments find a way to contain property tax increases, and that means controlling their budgets. Budgets are pressured by public employee and public service (firefighter, police, teacher's unions) pensions and benefits.
Those regions don't align with local definitions. WNY locally defines itself as 8 counties: Niagara, Orleans, Genessee, Erie, Wyoming, Chautauqua, Cattaraurus, and Allegeny.
There is definitely youth flight, but it seems more due to lack of jobs in the area. Our kids go to college, and don't come back home to settle down, they have to leave the area for employment. The declining population then has to support all those base services.
Local taxing entities like school districts, towns, villages are doing what they can with effectively shrinking budgets (GAP, tax cap, etc), but you can only cut so much AND absorb more state level unfunded mandates before you have to bust the cap. The way the tax cap is designed, if any entity in a town(or other unit) breaks the cap, every entity in the unit SHOULD also break the cap. The local taxpayers receive no tax rebate if any unit breaks the cap, so if one does, everyone gets dinged that year - might as well pile on, so that you all can reset your budget to at least recoup inflation, and then all stay under the cap for another few consecutive years. If each entity acts in a vacuum, the cap would be busted each year by another entity that reaches the breaking point.