 of all the taxes people pay both tax that we get the most complaints about is the property tax and that's because the property tax is very regressive it's based on the perception of the value of your property not based on your income and your ability to pay and as a result as people strive to purchase a home or to renovate a home the value of the property will go up the taxes will go up even though their income may not be keeping up with that and it's especially burdensome for senior citizens who often end up on fixed income and as the cost of living goes up their income does not keep pace and yet they want to stay in their homes and we want them to stay in their homes because after all that's where they raise their families that's where their lives revolve around that property those homes and sometimes for generation after generation and I was here in Pelham and I'm standing before the Pelham Town Hall I was here in Pelham for the Lions barbecue one year and it was actually I think my first or second year in the state legislature and I sat at the table with Abbey and Avis Weaver both unfortunately have passed on now but they were senior citizens at the time and and we're describing to me how much they love this community how much they wanted to stay in this community how much they wanted to stay in their home and how they wanted to support the services that they were used to receiving and that they knew their friends and neighbors and and family here in town needed and yet they were really struggling to pay their property taxes that message really hit home and I thought about that for some time and eventually sat down with the then state senator John over who was my partner representing Pelham and described the situation and together we came up with the idea of a circuit breaker for property taxes for senior citizens and it took about eight years maybe nine years for us to get that piece of legislation into place but the senior citizen tax break now for people who make limited incomes who have high property taxes or even who have high water or sewer bills in some communities you can apply you pay your property tax and then you apply when you fill out your income tax form even if you don't owe it any income tax you fill out the income tax form you report this data and you can get up to a thousand dollars back from state government and tens of thousands of senior citizens have benefited by this over the years and I'm going to say that it's been in place for somewhere around ten years now maybe coming on 11 or 12 years and my last checking on that was about 60 million dollars a year of property tax relief for senior citizens so that's 60 million a year eight six eight nine hundred million dollars over over a decade's time and a little bit more to help senior citizens so that they can stay in their homes and also so that they can support the services in their communities and here in Pelham that resulted in a lot of senior citizens voting to help build a new library which also contains the fire department that would not have been possible for many of those folks to support the override if they weren't getting some help from from this property tax relief so very proud that from the barbecue here and the DPW barn right next to the the town hall here in Pelham an idea was born over barbecued chicken it took a while to get it done but it's now helped thousands and thousands of people for more than a decade