A badly split citizens committee tentatively agreed yesterday to recommend an added property tax break for low-income senior homeowners in Howard County.
The group is scheduled to meet next week to complete a report due to the County Council by mid-November.
Yesterday's 5-4 vote represented a victory for Don Dunn, a 78-year-old west county resident who has pushed hard on the 15-member Senior Tax Credit Task Force for more relief than the law now provides.
The vote frustrated Chairman Ted L. Meyerson's attempt to get the group to suggest leaving the law as it is until next year, when more data on how it is working are available.
Those favoring Meyerson's view said they believe the law has done mostly what was intended and that changing it before the first year of operation ends would just confuse residents and complicate operations in the second year.
"Applications would go out in January or February, and people won't have to learn how to do a new one. We can look at it again next year," Meyerson said. Sue Brown, another committee member, agreed that the County Council should not change the law now.
It is better, she said, not to "mess with this every year. It drives people nuts!"
But Dunn and fellow committee member Frank Chase argued that because some people with low retirement incomes who applied to both the state and the county for tax relief received state tax credits, but no additional discount from the county, they should get more help. County law now requires applicants to seek state relief, too. If the state credit exceeds 25 percent of their property tax bill -- the limit in the county law -- they receive no additional county credit.
County finance officials said that Howard homeowners who qualify and have incomes of $20,000 or less have seen their average property tax bill fall from $2,500 to $143.
"By changing nothing, what we're doing is continuing to eliminate lower-income seniors who need help the most," Dunn said. Cutting another percentage of that remaining $143 won't cost the county much money, he said.
Chase argued for completely eliminating county property taxes for some elderly homeowners.
"I don't think Howard County should be collecting property tax from anybody making under $30,000 a year," he said.
Meyerson acknowledged that some lower-income seniors received too large a state tax cut to qualify for anything additionally from the county, but he questioned whether that was a problem.
