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A Few Clouds School district's tax freeze approved
Eligible L.B. homeowners to receive rebate checks from state
For the second consecutive year, qualifying homeowners will receive a tax rebate as a result of the Long Beach School district staying within Governor Andrew Cuomo’s tax cap.
The school budget for the 2015-16 school year adopted last spring will see a 3.19 percent increase to the tax levy, the maximum allowed under the governor’s tax cap. This is the first time the district has hit the cap since Hurricane Sandy, when officials agreed to keep taxes as low as possible to ease the financial burden on residents recovering from the storm. This year, however, officials said they needed to ask for the maximum in order to wean the district off of its reserve funds and increase overall fiscal health.
In order to receive the rebate the district was not only required to remain within the tax cap again this year but also had to submit a Government Efficiency Plan to the state in June, which was recently approved by the New York State Division of the Budget and will be forwarded to the Department of Taxation and Finance.
“First year, if you stayed within the cap, people got the tax rebate,” Superintendent of Schools David Weiss explained. “Which happened last year. For year two we had to stay within the tax cap and submit the efficiency plan.”
The district’s government efficiency plan follows the guidelines established in Cuomo’s 2014 Property Tax Freeze Credit legislation and shows a savings that is more than double the target amount of $962,502 in each year.
To qualify for the tax credit, a household must meet the eligibility for a STAR exemption, meaning the property must be the homeowner’s primary residence, and household income cannot exceed $500,000. Homeowners do not have to do anything additional to be eligible for the credit. The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance will review eligibility data and calculate the rebate.
Weiss added that the rebates did not all arrive at a uniform time last year, with some residents getting theirs in October while others came as late as March. He cautioned homeowners that this would likely happen again this year, but the rebates are in fact on their way.
