Posted on 12/25/2007 10:53:22 AM PST by NormsRevenge
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 an 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 at the town senior center, 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 workoff program in 1986 for residents over 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, clipping newspapers 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. She added that many stay in the program as volunteers after paying off their taxes.
In Concord, Mass., Maria Casey of the personnel department said about 10 seniors get $8.50 an hour to work at research, data entry and groundskeeping. The program, started in 1999, "allows seniors to be able to work and be involved in the community, and the town benefits by their work," she said.
Feiner is suggesting creating about 25 slots for seniors and letting them work off $500 or so a year. His proposal faces some obstacles. If the wages earned are to be tax-free and directly credited to the property tax bill, the state Legislature would have to approve. In addition, unions would have to be convinced that the program is no threat to their members' job security.
Feiner is hoping for at least a pilot program next year.
Eventually, he said, he would like to see the county and the local school districts adopt similar plans.
"If we got seniors working for the schools, there might be a more intergenerational feeling there," he said. "It might be easier to pass the school budgets."
Janet Goodman, a retired teacher and travel agent who was leading a knitting class at a Greenburgh community center, said paying the bills at her town house in Hartsdale, one of Greenburgh's seven villages, is "a constant struggle." She said she would gladly take part in a tax workoff program "as long as the work is interesting."
"You have to be creative," she said.
Excuse me but please explain to me why Social Security benefits are taxed.
I think up here they allow seniors to defer their taxes and the tax bill gets taken up with the estate after death of when the house s sold before then.
The article suggests she is living on 620 dollars a month but she is quoted in the article as saying she has taken out a reverse mortgage.
I'm no Hillary Clinton when it comes to real estate, but doesn't a reverse mortgage mean the bank is paying her?
This doesn’t make any sense...You have a government that wants tax money, yet they offer to pay tax money in return for services for that tax money owed? Only a Dem town would think of such a retarded thing.
So I thought about it.
First ... pay a wage that is entirely used for taxes ... nope, now you have subsidized taxi's to and from work ... and food stamps ... 'cause the work doesn't pay anything to the health and well-being of the worker.
Then I thought ... ok ... subsidize the $5 of a $12/hr job ... nope ... now it's taxpayers paying the taxes.
OK ... how about paying $12 and trusting that $5 would go toward taxes .... yeah, right.
I couldn't think of any other way except ...
Lower the friggin' taxes!!!
The story seems missing a few details. How did Ms. Davison ever buy such a large house in the first place if she is only getting $620 social security now? Social security is based on earnings, a $620 check now would indicate very low earnings while she was working.
This story is very disheartening. There are also so many angles. Forcing seniors to work at slave wages for the town so they can afford the taxes? $12,000 a year in property taxes? Why is she only getting $620/month in SS? Where are her children? Why does a 76 year old woman with a walker need a four bedroom home? Couldn’t she rent out a couple of the rooms? Lots of questions. Pretty sad though.
Bingo! Well said.
"Ain't" that considerate of them to allow a SS recipient who pays tax on a tax to be able to work to keep their abode by paying the taxes owed on their abode.
What a deal....
a friend of mine owns a beautiful villa on the southern coast of Spain. it’s been appraised at six million Euros. he pays about $350/year in taxes. much of the Europe that i’ve traveled is similar.
Excellent point.
“but doesn’t a reverse mortgage mean the bank is paying her?”
Yes it does. And in the end, she will have to turn over her estate to the bank. So she ends up losing the property anyway.
Just doing the work (young) Americans won’t do!
/sarcasm
She bought it 43 years ago.
That plays right into my question. She says she got a reverse mortgage on the house.
So she probably bought it for about 30 thousand dollars and sold it to the bank for 500,000 dollars.
How much is she getting from the bank every month?
Maybe her husband worked and bought the property and it was left to her.
>>How did Ms. Davison ever buy such a large house in the first place if she is only getting $620 social security now? Social security is based on earnings...<<
Perhaps she was self-employed for most of her working life?
Exactly. And depending on when she took out the reverse mortgage and depending on how long she lives, the bank will end up with at least a 500,000 dollar house while only shelling out perhaps less than 100,000. Again, depending on how long she lives.
I thought INDENTURED SERVITUDE was outlawed here?
Oh, that’s right: The laws that apply to US don’t apply to GOVERNMENT, the new age motto of which now appears to be
“WE’RE THE GOVERNMENT AND YOU’RE NOT!”
A government run by folks whose PERSONAL creeds seem to be “WE UPPED OUR STATUS, UP YOURS!”
-PJ
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