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Town lets seniors work off property taxes
BY JIM FITZGERALD The Associated Press

    GREENBURGH — 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 parttime, 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 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, 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 in 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 townhouse 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.

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Welcome to the Town of Greenburgh. I am very proud of the programs offered to our residents and want to urge you to visit our library, our parks, the Greenburgh Nature Center, the Theodore D. Young Community Center. We have 8 pools and parks,  a new interactive kiddie pool, 30 tennis courts, 2 ponds, 14 parklets, and an Arts and Culture Committee that offers free monthly programs for people of all ages. We even have a fitness center. (All at taxpayer expense.)

The Town of Greenburgh can provide so many tremendous services to its residents because we have outstanding employees and a support team of hundreds of volunteers (a.k.a. paycheck challenged workers).  If you would like to volunteer your time and talent by serving on a committee or commission board, or if you would like to work in a Town office, please call me at 993-1540.

Please feel free to contact me any time you have any problems, concerns or suggestions.You may stop by my office or call me for an appointment. I also hold weekly constituent problem-solving hours inside area supermarkets.  If you have a disability or are elderly and cannot come to me, I even make house calls.

Finally, I'd like you to know that my office always welcomes suggestions and feedback. We are looking for ways to save taxpayer dollars, to reduce waste and inefficiency, and to enhance local services. I appreciate your advice and thank you for your participation.

Paul J. Feiner,
Greenburgh Town Supervisor

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Your comments and suggestions will be welcome on the blog: http://www.pfeiner.blogspot.com.

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Wednesday, December 19, 2007
TOWN BD VOTES APPROVES BUDGET--TAX HIKES REDUCED SLIGHTLY
The Greenburgh Town Board approved the 2008 budget by a vote of 3-2 on Wednesday night. Voting for the budget: Supervisor Paul Feiner, Council members Francis Sheehan, Diana Juettner. Voting against the budget: Council members Steve Bass, Eddie Mae Barnes.
The proposed tax hike of 23% for residents of unincorporated Greenburgh was decreased to 19.4%. The town has an A budget (which is paid for by residents of unincorporated Greenburgh and the villages). There will be a 34.4% TAX REDUCTION IN THAT BUDGET. The A budget is very small –there have been major shifts in percentages in the past. Some years there have been big tax hikes –other years tax cuts. The percentages are big. The dollar amount is very small.
HOW DOES THIS TAX HIKE IMPACT YOU FINANCIALLY?
A property owner in unincorporated Greenburgh will see an increase of $348.66 equating to $2140.82 based upon a 15,000 dollar assessed value. REMEMBER: The town portion of your taxes is less than 20% of your entire tax bill.
A property owner in the villages will see a decrease of $31.93 in their tax bill. The average resident of a village will be paying the town $60.83 (sixty dollars and eighty three cents) based upon a $15,000 assessed value. The town provides very few services to the villages –villages have their own municipal governments.
NO ONE WHO VOTED FOR THE 2008 BUDGET IS HAPPY ---WHAT SHOULD BE DONE IN THE FUTURE?
1) We need to rely less on fund balance. The goal: Revenues should be closer to expenses.
2) We need to conduct a very comprehensive analysis & management review of all departments. A citizens budget committee and management review committee will be formed in early January to help oversee this review. The first meeting: Thursday, January 10th at 7:15 PM at Greenburgh Town Hall. We need to be open to new ideas re: restructuring the way government operates. I am very pleased that the town and Village of Dobbs Ferry have signed on to a study on sharing some police services.
3) Our budget needs to be more transparent. I believe that much more info about spending and programs should be posted on our web site. Comprehensive information about every program (costs, number of participants, revenues) should also be released to the public and posted on the web site.
4) Before we fund new programs – we should find equivalent cuts to offset the additional costs.
5) We need to look for ways to increase revenues. I am planning to schedule a land use summit on Tuesday January 15th at 7:30 PM at Greenburgh Town Hall.
6) We will aggressively seek additional grants to keep taxes down.
7) We had two consecutive zero percent tax hikes in unincorporated Greenburgh (2006 and 2007). Voters want stability and predictability. In retrospect, we should have had gradual tax hikes each year rather than two years of no tax hikes.

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The Town of Greenburgh can provide so many tremendous services to its residents because we have outstanding employees and a support team of hundreds of volunteers (a.k.a. paycheck challenged workers).  If you would like to volunteer your time and talent by serving on a committee or commission board, or if you would like to work in a Town office, please call me at 993-1540.

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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.