Senior Citizens Allowed to Work Off Property Tax

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Seniors Might Work Off Property Taxes

N.Y. town pushes program to help older people avoid having to move.

By JIM FITZGERALD

The Associated Press

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.

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Is this the modern serfdom?

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"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.

But lowering property taxes never entered his mind did it?

"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."

,,,,,a town of 90,000 in Westchester County, which has the nation's third-highest homeowner property taxes.

Mrs. Davison should sell her property to Wal-Mart and move out of the "workers paradise".

Is this the modern serfdom?

Sounds like a border line sweat shop operation.