It really gripes my soul to see senior citizens reduced to, as my friend Roger Thornhill says, “tax slavery,” in order to hold on to their homes. From an AP story in a recent edition of the Press & Sun-Bulletin we get this story:

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 [NY].

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.

Did you catch that? Grandma is paying over $12K a year in property taxes! How utterly mind-blowing is that?? You pay for your home, then you keep paying for it again and again and again in New York State. And now, the brainiacs in local government want to “enlist” (i.e. enslave) property owners who can’t afford it anymore into a life of indentured servitude until they finally croak. Disgusting.

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