Presented by the Bayonne Office on Aging, a division of the state Department of Health, the Oct. 29 Senior Citizen Summit gave local seniors an update on a variety of state and federal programs, including the Senior Property Tax Reimbursement Program, Medicare, the Pace program, senior citizen legislation, and other senior issues.
This was the last of three informational summits being held in Jersey City and Bayonne in order to provide the most current information about programs affecting senior citizens.
“My late husband Glenn used to say, senior citizens are our best friends.” – Sandra Bolden Cunningham
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“One of the nicest things about being a state senator is walking around and talking to people,” Cunningham said. “My late husband, Glenn, used to say, ‘Senior citizens are our best friends.’ And you are because you have so much knowledge and so much to give. You are our most precious commodity and a commodity we need to take care of.”
Mayor Smith credited Cunningham with “working tirelessly” on behalf of senior citizens and others in the community.
“I’ve had the benefit of having grown up in the greatest city in the world,” Smith said. “What I want for the future is for our 10- and 12-year-old children to have the opportunities I had growing up here. That is a foundation that was given to me by each of you senior citizens in this room. You are the reason Bayonne is the gem of Hudson County. It is because of your sacrifices.”
He said that if the summit can’t provide answers to residents’ questions, this group of people would find those answers.
Smith credited Joan Eccleston, outreach representative for Cunningham’s office, and Joseph Waks, municipal services director for the city of Bayonne, for putting the program together.
Rebates for seniors
One of the biggest changes made under Gov. Christopher Christie will affect the popular tax rebate program, known as the Homestead Rebate program. The changes will give seniors a rebate on property taxes as a tax credit against future taxes, rather than giving seniors a check as in the past.
Gov. Christie, when he proposed the changes at a press conference held in Bayonne last spring, called the old method an inefficient “political gimmick.”
Unfortunately, Foye told seniors at the summit, the changes will exclude renters who were eligible for the rebates in the past, and the tax credits will not take affect until the second quarter of 2011. So all seniors will lose the rebate for all of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011. On the positive side of the changes, the tax credit will no longer be considered income and will not have to be declared on state and federal income tax forms, Foye said.