RVC joins other districts in suing county

At the Board of Education meeting late last month, Rockville Centre schools joined a growing coalition of school districts filing suit against Nassau County and LIPA for reductions to the schools’ tax levies.

According to the districts, the county unfairly lowered their tax levies after they had been set by their boards of education and approved by their taxpayers.

Under the LIPA Reform Act, the county changed the payments that the electric utility was making from taxes to Payments In Lieu of Taxes, commonly referred to as PILOTs. While common, PILOTs are generally lower than what the taxes on a property would be.

Then this year, the county reduced school districts’ tax levies by the amount that LIPA was paying in taxes to each district. In Rockville Centre, it was a reduction of $185,000. In Oceanside, it was $2.2 million.

“The county made a decision unilaterally to reduce our levy, and we don’t believe it has the authority to do so,” said Rockville Centre Superintendent Dr. William Johnson.

The reduction was made to the district’s current-year tax levy, which is $91.4 million. The tax levy is how much money the district raises through property taxes to make up its budget. The Board of Education sets the tax rate and the voters in the district vote on it every year when they vote on the budget. The county collects and distributes the tax money that residents pay.

When the county reduced the district’s levy, it said the district would remake the money in a PILOT from LIPA. However, the district said the county wouldn’t guarantee a full repayment from LIPA.

According to Robert Bartels, the assistant superintendent for business, the district has already received part of the payment from LIPA. Rockville Centre, which had a relatively low reduction to begin with, is only waiting on a few hundred more dollars, he said.

But the district is still going through with the suit because of the precedent the county’s action sets. “That’s our concern: that the county can arbitrarily reduce the tax levy the board has authorized,” Bartels said. “They’ve never done it before.”