St. Louis County Councilman hopes to resurrect stalled senior tax freeze

ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. – One St. Louis County Councilman is making another push to get the county’s senior property tax freeze off the ground.

The effort has been stalled for months with bickering on how much money the county’s Department of Revenue will allocate to fund the program. However, seniors will have to wait a little longer for help.

Councilman Ernie Trakas did not hold enough support at Tuesday’s meeting and decided to hold off until next week.

The council has already approved $300,000, but Trakas has a bill he plans to put before the council to add another $600,000. He says it would be enough for part of the year to at least get the program up and running.

Seniors like Suzanne Frey are anxiously waiting for the Department of Revenue to accept applications.

“They tell me they don’t know anything… you ask to speak to a supervisor; they said the supervisors don’t know anything,” she said.

Rising property taxes put seniors like Frey in a bind.

“My house payment went up $100 a month and if I just had to live on my social security, I would have had $108 leftover this month,” Frey said.

Councilman Trakas says nothing will change until the new money is approved.

“If we don’t appropriate this money…there’s no chance the Department of Revenue will have the  application process up and running before this year’s over, which really is unacceptable when you consider we passed the ordinance 10 months ago,” he said. “Instead of having a cap at the 2024 value based on the 2023 assessment year, it’s going to be valued at the 2025 assessment. Again, that’s unfair to seniors.”

But Councilwoman Rita Days holds a different view.

”At this point, I’m not inclined to (vote for the $600,000). I want to hear from the department, I want to know what they have done with the original $300,000 that they had. Now if someone can come and tell me there is something different… I may consider that,” Days said. “Let’s put this in perspective. I’m a senior, this would help me out tremendously, but I also have to make sure that balances with the kind of money we have in St. Louis County.”

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