West Hempstead joins county guarantee suit

The West Hempstead school district is one of several districts across Nassau County to sign on to a lawsuit aimed at reversing the County Legislature’s October decision to end the 73-year-old guarantee to refund to property owners excess taxes collected for school districts and towns because of incorrect county assessments.

Participation in the suit, which is being facilitated by the Nassau Suffolk School Boards Association and filed by the firm Hamburger, Maxson, Yaffe, Knauer & McNally LLP, will cost each district $5,000 — a price West Hempstead Board of Education members said they consider a bargain.

“The $5,000 fee is a small price to pay to avoid a potentially much larger tax certiorari refund in the future,” said board Trustee Tony Brita. “Keeping the county guarantee in place could potentially save the districts hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would really depend on the size of the tax certiorari refunds that were given to properties located in the West Hempstead school district, and it would vary from year to year, so it is difficult to say exactly how much money would be at risk, but it is reasonable and prudent to assume that those costs would be substantial.”

The litigation fee will be appropriated from an existing hearings/litigations line in the district’s budget.

As it stands, the county pays about $100 million a year in refunds and $150 million a year in debt and accumulations resulting from drawn-out settlements. Tax certiorari debt amounts to about 46 percent of the county’s outstanding debt.

According to NSSBA Executive Director Lorraine Deller, Nassau County is one of only two counties in New York state where county assessors prepare the assessment role, but it is unique in that it is the only county that agreed to accept responsibility for errors in exchange for county-wide assessment jurisdiction. And with some 445,000 parcels, Deller added, there are bound to be  errors.