Apr. 8 -- At a boisterous Board of Selectmen meeting tonight, the Selectmen voted 4-1 in favor of raising the tax credit for the elderly to $700 per household from $600 per household. Selectman Mike Jones voted against the expansion.
The meeting was tumultuous as the audience, consisting mainly of people qualified for the tax credit, attacked the Selectmen for delaying a vote on increasing the value of the entitlement. They also vociferously opposed any sort of means testing as "demeaning" and "innappropriate" since they were "the people who built this town into what it is today."
At the meeting, Selectmen Jones presented his research on twelve towns in Connecticut with diferent elderly tax credit programs. Ridgefield's program was one of the most generous and expensive programs, costing $600,000 annually. It also was the only program without a means test of any sort. Most towns had simple programs paying a few hundred dollars annually to households with incomes under $20,000. Darien uses an asset based mean test, qualifying the award by income and appraised home value.
Mr. Jones presented a five point plan to "rationalize" the entitlement into a program to help low income elderly. The plan included the following items:
This program was not well received by the audience, at which point the Board voted on two motions. The first vote passed 4-1 and simply raised the benefit by $100, the first increase in more than a decade. The second was for the Board to appoint a committee to study this and all entitlement and benefit programs, develop suggestions to improve them, and present them back to the Board in the near future. The motion passed unanimously.
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