Will work for tax break

Seniors take advantage of chance to serve community, save money

Miriam Weinstein (right) is one of 42 senior citizens in Newton working for the city in order to earn a $750 tax credit. (Globe Staff Photo / Steve Haines)

Combined, they have paid more than 100 years of property taxes to the town of Wayland.

They said they were happy to do so: Their kids were receiving a great education, and property values grew apace for three decades as new families clamored to get in and Wayland became one of the most desirable suburbs in the state.

But now they're retired, with fixed incomes and escalating healthcare costs. Linda Hamilton, Lillian Mills, Bill Prendergast, and Barbara Webb fear that they won't be able to keep up.

In order to avoid being overwhelmed by the burden of local taxes, they engage in a curious form of municipal sweat equity called a tax-work-off program - near minimum-wage employment as, respectively, a Parks and Recreation Department fund-raiser, a Senior Center program coordinator, an assessor's office assistant, and a school library assistant, each earning a $500 discount on the town's ever-swelling annual property taxes.

Prendergast, 85, started working in the assessor's office about five years ago, when the work-off program could pay for about 10 percent of his tax bill. But Wayland's taxes have nearly doubled since 2000 - landing the owner of the town's average single-family home with an $9,548 annual bill.

"I don't get as much of a financial benefit out of it as I used to," he said. He has started working extra hours in other town departments.

Prendergast and Webb are among hundreds of thousands of retirees around the region facing higher taxes in the form of proposed property-tax overrides this season: Wayland wants to pass a $1.8 million override of Proposition 2 1/2, which caps annual property tax increases at 2.5 percent per year.

That's an extra $330 per average household - or an extra 45 more hours of labor for Webb, 62, who works in the Loker Elementary School library.

Webb wouldn't mind the work; she fulfilled her 67 hours of formal work-off service weeks ago, but keeps going as a volunteer because she loves helping the schoolchildren and knows the understaffed library, which faces even more cuts should the override fail, needs her.

But she objects to Wayland's fifth override question since 2002, even though the Senior Center, which administers the tax-work-off program, could also take a budget wallop. If the override fails to pass, the center probably will have to be closed one weekday each week and will lose thousands in senior transportation funds.

"Enough is enough," Webb said about this year's proposed tax hike. "I think people are tired of it."

Around the state, retirees say they are impatient with the prospects of higher tax bills, and are increasingly taking advantage of relief programs like work-off programs, abatements, and deferrals.

In Newton, where the average tax bill has gone up 39 percent in the past seven years to about $7,641 per home last year, the number of seniors working 94 hours for a $750 tax credit in various city offices has increased from 20 in 2004 to 42 this year, the city's assessment administration said. Many communities allow any senior to apply for work-off credit, but Newton limits its program to seniors with an annual income of no more than $60,000 per household.

Newton resident Miriam Weinstein has been working in various city offices for the past three years. She is "very concerned" about the prospect of a $12 million override passing on May 20. "I think it's awful, and there's just no end," she said. "It's ridiculous."

The tax-work-off program is helpful, she said. "You need every little bit you can get."

Some seniors are combining tax work-off with other options, like a state deferral program that allows seniors to defer taxes until their homes are sold. Until recently, the program was little used because of rigid age and income rules and an 8 percent interest rate.

But with new rules allowing local municipalities to raise the income limits from $40,000 to $60,000, lower the age of eligibility from 65 to 60, and lower the interest rate to 2.5 percent, the number of participants in Sudbury has jumped from 26 in 2004 to 63 this year, said resident Dave Levington, chairman of a town committee studying the senior tax-deferral program.

He said he hopes to see Sudbury expand its program and other local towns embrace the relaxed rules to provide more options for their older residents, he said. Wellesley, where homeowners pay an average of nearly $10,000 in property taxes per year, has seen its program grow from 45 to 52 participants since 2004, when it lowered interest rates to 4.86 percent and raised income limits for applicants to $50,000, officials said.

With more than 30 Greater Boston communities considering property-tax override questions this spring, one of the most-watched pieces of legislation is a local-option bill that could exempt seniors earning less than $60,000 annually from paying for another override as long as they live. It sailed through the House of Representatives, 111-34, late last month.

State Representative Ruth Balser, a Newton Democrat and the bill's sponsor, said the House recognized that "we can't give as much local aid as we want or as much as communities need, so we want to give communities the ability to raise their own revenue, but keep seniors in the community."

Communities could opt into the exemption on an annual basis.

But the bill faces stiff opposition in the state Senate, said its sponsor there, state Senator Cynthia Creem, a Democrat from Newton. Some senators say the exemption should be expanded to help low-income residents of all ages, she said, while others fear that an exemption for seniors would transfer too much of the tax burden onto strapped middle-income families. They also suggest that insulating seniors from the impacts of a tax hike would muffle a traditional voice of fiscal conservatism needed to keep municipal budgets in balance.

But Creem said older people need more protection if towns insist on passing more overrides.

"I strongly feel we benefit by communities that are intergenerational," Creem said. "The seniors should stay in the place they've lived in all these years, and know that we want them to stay."

It's not clear how many millions of dollars could shift from seniors to other taxpayers if communities were permitted to grant override exemptions.

But approximately 58,000 senior households earning less than $60,000 annually took advantage of the state's circuit-breaker law last year - receiving $39.5 million in tax refunds from the state, according to Balser's office.

The local override exemption - if it becomes law - could reach even more people.

However, some seniors say that their demographic group should not be counted out so quickly.

Jack Wilson, 81, who is actively lobbying on behalf of the Wayland override question, said older people have a civic duty to pay more taxes to help keep public schools strong.

"We have a responsibility to support education," said Wilson, who moved to Wayland in 1952. "This is our obligation as a community."

Erica Noonan can be reached at enoonan@globe.com.