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.
Under “free health care” at age 76, arthritic, suffering from sciatica, needing a walker to get around, and unable to meet her tax obligations she’d probably qualify for the special Terri Schiavo treatment.
The school had a student group out drumming up support for it.
Isn’t America grand. We can go all over the world spending taxpayer dollars to make life better for the people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Africa, South Korea, Europe, South America, etc. but we cannot take care of our own seniors. Something is wrong folks.
It sounds to me like they are replacing people that currently hold those positions with these senior citizens that are undoubtedly doing the same job for much cheaper wages! This is mind-boggling - soon the government will own all of the people AND their property...
Oh yeah, I guess that's the point.
$12,000.00 seems pretty steep. Perhaps it is time for her to downsize. Any NYers know what the assessed value is on a $12,000. property tax bill?
I am in Central New York. The assessed value of my house is $332,000. I pay about $10,500 in property taxes. Does that help?
BTW: The school district is about to put up a referendum to build a turf field, club house, stands, offices for the High School sports teams. That little gem will raise my taxes if it passes.
Yeah, wow. Youz guys have quite a tax rate.
If I lived in the nation’s third highest property tax area, I would MOVE.
The thought of cutting taxes never entered his mind.
Move that shovel gramps - or do you want us to take your ranch?
In WV, a $100K house has an assessed tax rate of < $500.
Then again, you get very few services.
extortion or slavery..................
Yes we do. Our taxes go up by 5-6% a year and have been for the last 5 years or so. And the Town raises our assessment every year. We got socked with a $32,000 jump in our assessment between January and September of this year and we only found out about it when our tax bill came.
Oh, and over $6000 of that levy is school taxes.
In California, we were headed down your tax road until Proposition 13 popped up in the late 70’s. Now it’s wrongly blamed for every failure of government services and our rates are low. Liberals government officials have another copout and we all have a decent taxrate. Guess that’s win/win...
In Kansas, my property taxes continue to climb every year. However, where this state really gets its honest residents in the short hairs is what they tax us on our vehicles, motorcyles, and boats. Our personal property taxes have to easily be the highest in the country. However, more and more Kansans are registering vehicles, etc. in other states to evade that tax. Only the honest Kansans are left paying out the @ss for these things. Our legislatures haven’t figured out, if the thing isn’t stationary, like a house, people will seek other alternatives, to evade any enormous tax.
The rural properties are down as low as $8 per assesed value. then we have special property tax savings, if you have a farm where you grow trees, or produce livestock or hay, you get a property tax, of way less. On our property, big acreage, 2 houses and buildings, we pay about $600 a year in property tax. All this in a very liberal state, done with initiatives voted by the people and the powers that be can do nothing!!
Come on, she’s only 76, uses a walker, has sciatica, and arthritis! She’s still breathing, right? And as long as she can breathe, she belongs to the compassionate and loving Democrat Town Supervisor.
We’ve got much the same problem in Texas except that we don’t have an income tax so the property taxes here are astronomical. It’s a big reason why so many of my co-workers are retiring to Mexico or to “decline” states like Louisiana and Mississippi. Facing tax problems like this into our elder years makes the final outcome look welcome.
In high tax states, they also have to pay for it in front-end alignments, because much of the money from high taxes is either wasted or goes into the pockets of corrupt politicans and their cronies. It’s a way of life in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
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