Plan Has Seniors Work to Pay Property Taxes

No, not in Indiana.

New York.

But it sure seems that the Hoosier state isn't the only one with a property tax problem.

From the Associated Press:

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.

Let me get this straight.

This town is going to take tax dollars to pay people who can't afford to pay high taxes?

Wouldn't lower taxes be a better solution?

I don't think that grandma should have to be a greeter at Wal-Mart just so that she can pay the property taxes for a house she and grandpa built forty years ago.

And grandma shouldn't have to engage in indentured servitude to the government just to pay off property tax debts either.