Posted on 12/26/2007 6:32:25 AM PST by Sam's Army
GREENBURGH, N.Y. | Audrey Davison lives alone, gets a $620 Social Security check each month and worries about the sharply rising taxes on her four-bedroom house. Davison, 76, raised her family there and after 43 years, she really doesn't want to leave Greenburgh.
Greenburgh doesn't want her to leave, either.
The town is pushing a program that would let seniors work part-time, for $7 per hour, to help pay off some of their property taxes.
"People shouldn't have to sell their house, move away to a place with less taxes, leave behind their family and friends," said Town Supervisor Paul Feiner.
He envisions retired doctors mentoring schoolchildren, retired accountants helping with the town's finances, retired lawyers offering their services for a discount. But there are plenty of less-skilled jobs that need doing, he said.
"It's not like we're going to see grandma running the snowplow," he said. "There are lots of things people can do for the town and it wouldn't cost us that much to pay them."
The proposal has caused a stir in Greenburgh, a town of 90,000 in Westchester County, which has the nation's third-highest homeowner property taxes. The plan would be unusual if not unique in New York, but similar programs are considered successes in Colorado, Massachusetts, South Carolina and elsewhere.
Davison, who suffers from arthritis and sciatica and needs a walker to get around on her bad days, said she pays about $12,000 a year in property taxes - perhaps $2,000 to the town - and has already taken out a reverse mortgage to pay her bills.
Talking to Feiner last week, she said, "I would work as long as it was a job where I could sit."
"You could be a receptionist!" Feiner said. "You could greet people right here, when they come in."
"That, I would love," Davison said.
Scott Parkin, spokesman for the National Council on Aging, said the program sounded interesting, as long as it wasn't limited to menial work. "It's certainly in line with what we stand for, keeping seniors involved in work or volunteering as a part of healthy aging," he said.
Boulder County, Colo., pioneered a tax work-off program in 1986 for residents older than 60 and now has about 250 applicants for the fewer than 100 openings, said spokeswoman Barbara Halpin. The work done by the seniors includes landscaping, gathering climate data and staffing the courthouse information booth.
"Taxes aren't that high out here, so even at $7 an hour people can burn off their county taxes pretty quickly," Halpin said.
great, rather than lowering the taxes, or giving Senior Citizens...who have been paying their entire lives..a tax break, they would rather enslave them for $7 per hour. Scumbags!!!!
I thought only eeeeevvvvviiiilll corporations forced senior citizens into financial difficulty? When will Congress investigate?
I think I may have spotted the problem. What's the difference between slavery and ...
I am 56 years old and the taxes on my home are now over $6,000. I want to be able to keep the home in the family, passing it down to one of our sons, but with those kind of Minnesota taxes it may be impossible.
We just passed another school levy which will raise our taxes even more. The school had a student group out drumming up support for it. These kids think there is nothing wrong with taking 10% of people’s income just for real estate taxes.
How incredibly backward is this? Why doesn’t the beneficent Mr. FEINER has the guts to lower taxes so senior don’t have to work. Just more NE liberal craziness.
I live in Alabama, 4000 sq ft all brick, sodded yard with sprinkler, pool, etc., and my 2006 annual taxes were $1169. Of course I'm doubtfull that I get the level of gov't services that she gets!
Until searches can match up the same articles even when they have different titles; we’ll run into this.
A stepping stone to those rice paddies that “Mr. Mark” has been warning us about on his radio show....
And the crazy thing is that these same senior citizens will likely continue to vote for the party that will continue to raise their property and every other tax, because “Republicans don’t care about the elderly and want to force them to eat cat food”.
Untill they grow up and buy property of their own, THEN they will see how wrong it is.
The other day my Mom called.
She wanted to borrow money.
For food.
Again.
I told her she could fix my car.
yep.... I’m in OKC with a brick house on a golf course. Property taxes about $1800 per year. Of course... we pay for it in front end alignments driving on the lousy streets :)
As usual, though, this article gets it completely backwards. "Seniors are paying waaaay too much in taxes, what are we going to do *for them*".
Instead, the story should be "This town's property tax policy is completely confiscatory. Where should the local pols slash spending, so that the taxes can be lowered?"
I hate "jornalists".
I hate “journalists”, too. Along with mornigns that i cant spell to gud.
You got that right! How these jerk off greedy politicians are handing illegals free existence and our old folks are being TAXED, LET ALONE NO FREE HEALTH CARE FOR YEARS OF PAYING TAXES. We need a real American back in the white house.
Look ma..tax slaves
and libs love it.....
I don’t get this either.
Do they have a budget surplus where they have the money to pay these people to “work off” their tax obligations or are they going to raise taxes on them again to fund this program for them to work off?
Isn’t the minimum wage in NY at $7.15/Hour?
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