goldenequity
12-26-2007, 09:40 PM
Can it get any worse????? Oh yeah......... it sure as hell can!! :mad:
What’s the innovative solution for seniors who are lonely, broke and unable to pay their property taxes? Have them work for the tax man!
Of course, the Associated Press represents this as a human interest/happy ending story. What’s next? Positive spin on a minimum income law? Maybe the benefits to society of debtors prisons…
New York Town Lets Poor Seniors Work to Pay Property Taxes
December 27th, 2007
Via: AP (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iP9IXXv2b9zH07ICCMaxuBMPzqKgD8TOK2500):
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.
What’s the innovative solution for seniors who are lonely, broke and unable to pay their property taxes? Have them work for the tax man!
Of course, the Associated Press represents this as a human interest/happy ending story. What’s next? Positive spin on a minimum income law? Maybe the benefits to society of debtors prisons…
New York Town Lets Poor Seniors Work to Pay Property Taxes
December 27th, 2007
Via: AP (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iP9IXXv2b9zH07ICCMaxuBMPzqKgD8TOK2500):
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.