A proposal to redistribute property taxes to help homeowners with limited means and property values is the subject of a Zoom presentation on Monday, May 3 at 7 p.m.
At the upcoming Annual Town Meeting on May 15, voters will be asked to approve a home-rule petition to the state legislature that would allow Lincoln to create a local Property Tax Extended Circuit Breaker Program. If approved, the program would limit the percentage of income a homeowner would have to pay in property taxes based on their income, assets, length of time in town, and age (65+). Funding would come from a small across-the-board tax rate increase.
The Property Tax Study Committee was formed in 2019 to look at ways to ease the burden on limited-income residents and preserve economic diversity after the town raised property taxes by almost 15% to pay for the $93 million school project. The issue was discussed at the State of the Town Meeting in November 2019 and was slated for a vote at Annual Town Meeting, but that meeting was postponed and stripped of nonessential warrant articles as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold.
Last year’s postponed proposal would have applied to renters as well as homeowners, “but we don’t have an easy mechanism for implementing this kind of a program for renters — we don’t have that [financial] connection with them as we do with homeowners,” Selectman Jennifer Glass said when she recapped the plan at an April 26 board meeting. To track more closely to other towns’ programs, Lincoln’s plan applies to homeowners over 65 who meet the state’s income limits and those who have lived in town for five years, rather than the 10 years specified by some other towns. Otherwise, the proposed program is identical to the one that has been offered in Sudbury since 2014.
“We want our home rule petition to be as familiar to the legislature as possible” to maximize its chances of passage, Glass said. Sudbury, Concord, and Wayland have already enacted local versions of the state circuit breaker program.
To qualify for the plan, a house must not exceed Lincoln’s average single-family property value plus 10%. The plan would be funded by shifting up to 0.5% of the total tax levy in the first year, and 1.0% in years two and three. The program would have to be reauthorized at Town Meeting every three years.
Phase 2 of the effort to limit the tax burden on some seniors will involve establishing a task force to look at the town’s social services and come up with a long-range plan for social svcs and det LR plan for supporting the community’s needs.
In 2019, the committee initially floated a residential tax exemption as well as the circuit-breaker proposal, but it was shelved after residents at a public forum were cool to the idea. That proposal would have exempted a certain percentage of the value of everyone’s property, meaning that the tax burden would shift toward those with higher-value homes to benefit those with homes at the lower end of the value range.
Please note that the maximum levy shift in years 2 and 3 would be 1.0%. Also, the 5-year residency requirement has always been part of the Committee’s recommendation. It is different from the 10 years required by other towns. Otherwise, the proposed program is identical to the one that has been offered in Sudbury since 2014.