Greenburgh, NY is experiencing a rapid reduction in its population of old coots. Apparently, due to the overwhelming tax burden, the town’s elderly residents are being forced to relocate to friendlier climes. But town supervisor Paul Feiner has a plan to prevent this mass depopulation. By lowering their taxes you say? Heaven’s no! That would be far too sensible for a self-aggrandizing bureaucrat. Feiner’s plan is to put those wrinkly bodies into part-time government jobs, paid for by (what else) taxpayer money. Don’t worry though, Feiner only intends to pay the pappies sub-minimum wages for their efforts—about $7/hr.

“Feiner is suggesting creating about 25 slots for seniors and letting them work off $500 or so a year.”

I don’t know how much of a help $500 will be for people like Audrey Davison, whom, as the AP article notes, owes about $12k in taxes every year.

Really, it’s bad enough that seniors have to suffer through the indignity of aging, shelling out $50 a month for oops-I-crapped-my-pants, and struggling to remember their own names, (which makes me curious about how effective they’ll be as employees), but now they have to “work off” their burden to the town coffers? Sounds like indentured servitude to me. Although it does solve the problem of finding cheap labor in the wake of certain immigration laws.

A better plan might be to cut some line items from the town’s budget. Below are suggestions of programs and appointments the supervisor can scrap to both save money and benefit everyone in the town:

• Senior transportation: $30,000 (really? where do they need to be?)

• The Narcotics Guidance Council: $53,674 (drugs are a fun way for seniors to pass the time)

• The Recreation Administration: $1,774,147 (see above)

• Community pool over: $700,000 (nobody needs to see old man boob)

• The Nature Center: $357,900 (let them run free in the wild)

• Supervisor Feiner’s Salary: $123,000 (they’ll manage without ‘ya Paulie)

Filed under: Profiles in Governance