School taxes jump

Some Rockville Centre residents may have seen an unexpected spike in their 2013-14 tax bills, which school district officials say is due to the county’s mismanagement of the tax rolls.

Many residents have seen decreases in their bills, but many have also seen their tax bills increase. Some of the increases were small, while others were $1,200 or more.

“It all depends what happened to their assessment,” said Robert Bartels, the district’s assistant superintendent for business. “I was talking to one person today who had a $1,200 increase in his taxes, and his immediate neighbor had a $200 decrease in his taxes. There was another neighbor that had a $250 increase. So three immediate neighbors were all over the place.”

According to the Rockville Centre School District, the cause of the problem is two-fold: the state’s distribution of the tax burden and the Nassau County assessment system.

There are four property classes in New York from which taxes are collected: homes, multi-family dwellings (apartments), commercial property and utilities. This year, the state shifted more of the burden onto Class 1 property owners, which are homes. That caused an increase of about 1 percent in Rockville Centre. This is known as an adjusted base proportion.

The main cause of the increase were changes to the tax rolls. The county had frozen the assessments, meaning they wouldn’t be increased. While they weren’t, many residents filed challenges to have their assessments lowered. Of those who appealed, 87 percent won and had their home values lowered, which would lower their tax burden.

Lowering the values of the homes also lowered the assessed valuation of the community, which determines the tax rate. This year, Rockville Centre needed to raise $87.2 million through taxes, which the community approved in May when it voted on the budget. Because the property values had decreased, there was less property value to tax. But because the money needed to be raised, the tax rate (which is set by the county) was increased to make up the difference.

With the higher tax rates, many people who didn’t challenge their assessments saw spikes in their tax bills. The district raised the levy by 3.55 percent, but the tax rate increased 8.92 percent.

“When one person goes up by $1,200 and his neighbor goes down by $200, that has nothing to do with the school district,” Bartels said. “If we increased the tax levy 3.5 percent, assuming no tax rate changes or no based adjusted proportion changes, then everybody’s individual taxes should increase 3.5 percent. If there’s any change outside of that, it has nothing to do with us.”

Superintendent Dr. William Johnson said that, until the county changes the way it handles its assessments, the only way residents can get their tax bills lowered is to appeal their assessments.

“I think what we need to do, ultimately, is to work with someone at the county to figure out and put together a viable assessment system,” he said. “There’s no other county in the state of New York that goes through the volatility that we do here in Nassau County. And I’m sure that we can learn from some of our colleagues and our neighbors to the east and to the north.”