Aging Commission Chairman: As Darien’s Senior Population Grows, Town Improves Services

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Darien Senior Activities Center sign

The Darien Senior Activities Center is at 2 Renshaw Road, in the Mather Community Center.

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A higher fee for lunches at the Senior Center might be coupled with improvements in the already good meals; tax relief should go to veterans, many of whom are seniors, and the state should tax estates less in order to keep more seniors in Connecticut.

Those were some of the topics and recommendations covered in a kind of “State of the Town for Seniors” presentation given to the Board of Selectmen on Monday by Joseph Pankowski Jr., chairman of the Darien Commission on Aging. The commission is a town government advisory panel that monitors the town Senior Center and otherwise advocates for senior citizens.

The population of seniors is large in Darien — about 3,000 of the town’s 20,000 or so residents (roughly one in seven) is over the age of 60, Pankowski told the board`, and “this demographic is the fastest growing segment of the town’s population.”

Mather Center

The Senior Center moved from its former Edgerton Street location and started meeting at the then-brand new Mather Community Center on July 21, 2014, Pankowski reminded the selectmen.

Mather

Mather

Mather Community Center, 2 Renshaw Rd, Darien, where the Darien Senior Activities Center is located (use the lower parking lot).

That move brought seniors to a much nicer location without the maintenance problems that the Senior Center was plagued with in the old building (which has since been torn down).

Senior Center participation shot up after the move to the Mather Community Center, he said: “It’s been an amazing, amazing thing for our seniors. It continues to grow.”

There are now 1,414 seniors who go to Senior Center activities, as of Sept. 30, and the vast majority of them (925) are Darien residents, he said. Many of the 489 out-of-town seniors who attend activities are parents of Darien residents or former residents themselves, he said, so the commission is reluctant to impose a fee on them, or impose a higher fee than Darien residents pay.

He said many of the out-of-town people using the Senior Center also teach classes there to other seniors for free, and he wouldn’t want to lose them.

Raising the Lunch Fee to $5

Rather than try to raise revenue from out-of-towners at a time when the state is expected to reduce its grants to the town, Pankowski said the commission recommends raising fees for services which also might improve. He suggested a $5 fee for each weekday lunch at the Senior Center, up a dollar from the current $4 fee, would be something seniors would see as reasonable.

Board of Selectmen 12-19-2016 from Darien TV79 on Vimeo.

At the same time the fee was raised, the Senior Center could spend some of the money to improve lunch, he said. Recently the chef added a fruit cup to a lunch, and people chose to eat that rather than the regular doughnuts, which were largely untouched.

Overall, Pankowski said, the lunch served at the Senior Center is healthy, well-made and “for many of them [seniors] it is the best meal they’re going to get every day.”

One ongoing problem with the Mather Center is an old freight elevator that’s been refurbished as a regular elevator, Pankowski said. The elevator isn’t entirely working right, he said, although he didn’t specify what the problems were.

Programs

“The programming Beth Parris [Senior Center coordinator] does is an amazing job, I mean with classes from 9 a.m. till 1 in the afternoon: acrylic painting, ballet, Spanish, stained glass — you name it, it’s there.”

Having a wood shop program is especially important, Pankowski said, because it attracts men to the program who otherwise might be more reluctant to come.

Veterans Tax Relief

The Commission on Aging would like to see the town adopt the maximum 10 percent town property tax relief program for veterans that other area towns and cities have adopted, Pankowski said.

Darien Senior Activities Center sign

The Darien Senior Activities Center is at 2 Renshaw Road, in the Mather Community Center.

He and commission member Mary McCarthy told the Board of Selectmen that the commission’s research, with a lot of help from the town Tax Assessor’s Department, shows that if the maximum 10 percent tax exemption were adopted, the town would lose only $39,286.48 in revenues, with disabled veterans getting $5,487,03 of that.

McCarthy cautioned that the amount of money involved will change over time, with the number of veterans living in town changing, so more money might be involved in the future.

Those numbers are based on what current veterans and disabled veterans pay in property taxes, at least those who have already been identified as eligible veterans by the state for its own tax exemption program.

The tax exemption would be subject to income limits. There are nine identified disabled veterans in town and about 40 or 50 veterans who would be eligible (under state rules) for the property tax exemption, Pankowski said.

Connecticut’s Estate Tax

Connecticut is one of the few states with an estate tax, although smaller estates, below $2 million, aren’t subject to it. But the state needs to raise the limit on the amount of money an estate can be worth before the tax takes effect, otherwise the state will continue to see residents moving to Florida or, now, even to New York state, which has raised its exemption to $4.1 million and is scheduled to raise it even higher (to $5.4 million), Pankowski said.

“It is absolutely vital that the state raise its estate tax exemption,” said Pankowski, who works as a lawyer often doing work for estate tax planning. In the past year, he’s helped two clients move to Florida to protect their assets, he said. Connecticut’s relatively high income tax probably also played a role in some decisions to move out of state, but the estate tax certainly played a role, he said.

“We need to move our Connecticut exemption to the federal exemption level, to simply protect everything else our seniors do,” Pankowski said. These seniors affected by the estate tax exemption would stay in Connecticut where they contribute to the community with volunteer hours, charitable contributions to local organizations, including Stamford Hospital and Norwalk Hospital, to various charities in the area, like Person-to-Person in Darien, and to churches and synagogues, he said.
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Related: Here’s the video of the 41-minute Commission on Aging meeting held Tuesday, Dec. 21:

Commission on Aging 12-21-16 from Darien TV79 on Vimeo.

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“We need our seniors here, and to the extent that we don’t change our state tax exemption, we’re going to continue to see our seniors leave,” Pankowski said.

Pankowski said he’s spoken about the matter with state Rep. Terry Wood, who also favors raising the exemption amount, and the governor, earlier this year indicated he may favor a change. Selectman Rob Richards said he’s spoken to Darien’s other state legislators, and they also look favorably on raising the exemption.

Senior Housing

Perhaps the Commission on Aging’s least successful advocacy has been to get senior housing at the former site of the Senior Center on Edgerton Street, Pankowski said. The Board of Education must first decide whether they need the land for any school expansion, and the commission is waiting for the board on that. (Consultants have been hired to study the town’s need for school space and to develop plans.)

“Senior housing is very needed in this town,” he said. At Old Town Hall Homes on the Post Road, the construction firm doing the replacement project is still in the process of getting town approval for some plans. The commission’s focus will be on making sure that the JHM Management Group constructs the buildings properly and that Imagineering LLC manages the site properly when the new buildings are built.

Pankowski said he’s “very excited” that David Genovese has proposed some housing for seniors as part of his large Corbin Drive/Post Road redevelopment project downtown.

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