That's a very well-regarded lens: lots of bang for the buck. You might want to compare it against the AF-S 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR DX if you can. If you want aperture, the AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED can have great performance, but it's a monster piece of glass, not very wide at the wide end and maybe overpriced. It probably comes into its own on FX sensors rather than DX.
Regarding UV filter, I agree with GG on going for quality, but not for the same reason: glass filters UV anyway. Lenses are made of glass. So they all filter down to around 350nm just fine. You want one that filters down to 400nm. This has a couple of effects: it can remove the blue cast at altitude, but more importantly it cuts through haze because, although cameras are not very sensitive to UV, they're more sensitive than humans with the rough result that they see more haze than the Mark I eyeball does.
Also, don't buy a used polarizer, since they are lifed items.