A lot of elder citizens in suburbs west of Boston are stirred up these days about their property taxes. That’s why some one hundred of them turned out for a meeting in the Wayland Town Building two weeks ago to make the case for coming to their assistance. Several of their state legislators were there to listen, along with Senate President Tom Birmingham. That President Birmingham came to Wayland was, by his own admission, a rarity and it underlined the importance of the occasion.

I had been informed about the issue by a reader in Sudbury, Peter Glass. After presentations by Birmingham and other legislators, Glass was the first to testify and led with a rhetorical blow to the solar plexus of the movement. “To me, this whole senior tax movement is awful,”  he proclaimed. “It’s like wealthy people dressing in rags and going to a soup kitchen for a meal.” It speaks well for the good manners of the other elders present that no one booed or hissed.

Senator Birmingham, in response, began with a compliment. “Let me congratulate you,” he said to Peter Glass, “you’ve got a lot of guts.”  The senate president then went on to defend his own proposed legislation, a Circuit Breaker Tax Credit,  that would grant up to $750 to homeowners whose income does not exceed $40, 000 for an individual and $60, 000 for a couple. He called it “one of the better tax cuts proposed in the 1990s.”

Walter Parfenuk, leader of the Sudbury Senior Tax Relief Committe, put strongly the case for something better than the tax deferral system currently on the books. “Tax deferrals do not work,”  he asserted. “There is an 8% charge on your house each year and a lien on it.”

“I’ve been paying my fair share for 47 years,”  Parfenuk continued. “Why can’t we get some help?” That help, in the form of reductions based on income, would cost his fellow town residents who are not seniors only $42 a year, he calculates, an amount that few would find burdensome. This approach of pegging reductions to elders’ income would be better than tax credits, he asserted, and that’s why his coalition is not endorsing legislation providing such credits.

Another elder citizen, Emmanuel Mayer of Lincoln, eloquently reinforced this argument. “The property tax is unfair,”  he claimed, “precisely because it is not based on income. It does not care about community, it only cares about money.”

Quite a different approach came from Dick Brault of Hopkinton. “We’ve been able to help eleven families on a voluntary basis.” By virtue of a new state law, residents in Hopkinton and other communities can contribute to a fund designed to provide money to elder residents unable to pay the full amount themselves. Dick and his allies have succeeded in raising $15, 000 in only three months, with one individual donating $5, 000 himself.

Martha Weston, a member of Wayland’s Council on Aging, approached the question from yet a different angle. She suggested that a lot of people, especially widows living alone in old houses, would be well advised to consider alternative residential arrangements. “They would be so much better off,” she claimed, “if they lived in a community setting.”  There seemed in the hall a palpable lack of sympathy for Martha Weston’s suggestion.

For me, not a resident of the MetroWest region, the meeting provided a welcome opportunity to meet and talk with elder citizens in that area. The two-hour session itself I found both informative and provocative. It felt like democracy in action except that the proceedings were better focused than usual.

The long experience of the elders taking part showed to very good advantage. Most Americans, after all, are terrified by the prospect of speaking at microphone. But those in Wayland spoke out boldly. The legislators in attendance had good reason to take seriously the statements of such eloquent testifiers.

The good manners of those in attendance also made a favorable impression on me. Even in the face of vigorous contrary opinion, members of  the majority remained respectful of dissent. It spoke well for area residents that they can combine zeal for their own agenda with respect for other views.

Is property tax relief for elders likely to be adopted by the Commonwealth? Seeking an answer to that question, I called the office of Senate President Tom Birmingham and asked him directly. About his own bill he said: “Chances are very good. I’m not proprietary about mine; all the bills are heading in the right direction.”

He added that pressure from elders is not coming just from the suburbs. “There is no urban/suburban divide on this. People in Cambridge and Charlestown are being heard from too.”

Richard Griffin