Photo: Flag with the town seal of Belmont

After discussing the move for a better part of a year, the Belmont Select Board voted unanimously Monday, March 25, to raise by $500 to $2,000 the amount seniors can work for the town to pay off a portion of their local property tax bill.

The town’s Senior Citizen Tax Work-Off program is available to seniors 60 or older, Under this “work” initiative, cities and towns appropriate funds to employ seniors who perform needed work for the community at an hourly rate equal to the state’s minimum wage of $15 per hour, according to state documents.

Currently, eight homeowners participate in the program. The additional $4,000 expended in a full year with the same participants will come out of the overlay/free cash line item.

Details of the expanded program will be sent to seniors via inserts in town bills and through contacts at the Beech Street Center.

The state has recently given select boards and city councils the local option to raise the exemption to the $2,000 threshold amount without requiring Town Meeting approval, Patrice Garvin, town administrator, told the board.

When Board member Mark Paolillo, in his penultimate meeting before leaving the board after serving 12 years, asked what other municipal programs are available for senior tax relief, fellow board member Elizabeth Dionne said creating such a plan would require “the full and active participation of the Board of Assessors.”

“We would need to know what the cost shift [from seniors to the greater taxpayer base] and how many [seniors] are likely to take advantage of it,” she said. Since such a proposal would change every property owners’ tax rate, the town would need to send a home-rule petition to Beacon Hill for state legislature approval and finally for it to be placed on the town ballot for an up or down vote.

Even though the shift would likely be small, unless there is a specific dollar amount attached via the Assessors, “it’s probably dead in the water.”

Board Chair Roy Epstein said senior tax relief was actually a doable proposal in the past two years, only to falter due to inaction by the assessors in drafting the language to present to the legislature which was promised to Epstein.

“I think this is a question for, maybe, after April 2,” said Epstein, referring to after the town’s annual Election where a ballot question will determine whether the Board of Assessors will remain an elected committee or revert to an appointed one.