Assessment Shift Could Cost Massapequa Schools $3.5 Million

If Nassau County goes through with a plan to shift the burden of paying for tax assessment errors to local school districts, it could set Massapequa back $3.5 million, a top district administrator said.

Deputy Superintendent Alan Adcock, whose duties include overseeing the district's budget, presented the grim possibility at a recent school board meeting.

Adcock said the $3.5 million was only an estimate, leaving open the possibility that the County plan could cost the district even more money.

County Executive Ed Mangano, R-Bethpage, has proposed eliminating the "County guarantee," which has given Nassau jurisdiction over property assessment since 1938. Nassau County is one of only two counties in the state that has that privilege.

The county's proposal to reform the system would require schools, villages, towns and other local municipalities to pay their share of tax certiorari refunds for false assessments.

Schools have been adamantly opposed to the plan, with many administrators including Adcock appearing at a recent session of the Nassau County legislature to voice their opposition.

Adcock also said at last week's school board meeting that another planned county move could cost the district.

"In addition to that $3.5 million, they also want to start charging school districts a sewer usage tax, something for years, that public schools have been exempt from paying," he said.

The sewer usage tax would cost the district an additional $400,000, according to Adcock, or a total of almost $4 million when combined with the proposed assessment change.

"That represents about two percent of our school budget," he said. "It's not a one shot deal. This is an ongoing cost."

School Superintendent Charles Sulc said, "It's absolutely unfair to shift this burden from the county to the school district," and blasted the county for leaving schools to scramble for money.

"One of the assumptions that they've made is that we're going to get additional state aid," he said. "We all know we're not getting additional state aid. We haven't gotten our fair share of aid for years."

In addition to discussing the proposed assessment change, Adcock also discussed how taxes are proportioned, saying that the portion of taxes paid by residential tax payers has risen in recent years while the portion paid by businesses, renters and utilities has gone down.

The deputy superintendent also said he's been receiving calls from property owners asking why their taxes have not stayed the same even though their assessments have gone down.

According to Adcock, asessments are down 15.6 percent in the community from last year to this year.

"So if the county adjusted your market value for your assessment down only 5 percent and not 15 percent, you actually got more taxes this year than you did last year," he said.

But Adcock also sited several examples of homes in Massapequa which had very different assessments despite being on the same block or in close proximity to one another.

"This is one of the worst years in five or six years that I've seen where the assessments are so disproportionately changing up or down," he said.

Critics of the proposed assessment change have said the problem could get worse, as the County will have no incentive to get the assessments right if the reform passes.