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Nassau Correcting Property Values

By Celeste Hadrick | Staff Writer

November 27, 2002

In two weeks about 28,000 property owners in Nassau County will receive notice that their tax assessments will be changed as county officials correct values developed for the first countywide reassessment in 64 years.

Bruce Nagel, president of Cole Layer Trumble, the Ohio company developing the new values, told legislators last night that the changes are being made in response to thousands of phone calls and visits by taxpayers after they received their preliminary assessments this summer.

County officials said about 21,000 property owners will have their assessments decreased while about 6,700 will see their assessments increased.

The legislative hearing in Mineola yesterday was the first on reassessment since the legislature two years ago agreed to revalue all county properties. With the new assessments taking effect Jan. 1, Presiding Officer Judy Jacobs (D-Woodbury) called for the legislative hearing "to determine if we got what we paid for ... in terms of quality, reliability, accuracy and homeowner satisfaction."

Lawmakers heard complaints from a Levittown homeowner whose house was classified as waterfront because he lives by a sump, from a town house owner in Glen Head who said her home was compared to single-family ranches, and from several condominium owners complaining about their high taxes.

Expected to testify were County Assessor Charles O'Shea, an elected Republican; James Culver, the county's reassessment consultant; and Nagel.

Over the objections of some Republican lawmakers, the legislature in 2000 agreed to the reassessment to settle a lawsuit filed by minority homeowners, who contended the county's archaic system discriminated against them.

Urged by O'Shea, the Democratic majority on the legislature voted to hire Cole, which has handled reassessments for communities throughout the country, for $34 million.

Minority Leader Peter Schmitt (R-Massapequa), who voted against re- assessment and the hiring of Cole, said such a fact-finding hearing should have been conducted before reassessment began.He says the rush to reassess has led to too many errors, such as the overtaxing of vacant lots and inconsistencies with values along the waterfront.

"There is no time to fix this," Schmitt said. "That's the recklessness of what they did three years ago. If we had another year, then we could make a compilation of all these problems" and deal with them.

The county had asked the judge handling the settlement for four years to conduct the reassessment of all 416,000 properties in Nassau, but was given three years, followed by six mandated annual updates.

Jacobs denied it was too late to solve any problems that may have occurred. "We have over a month before it has to be set," she said. "I believe that's doable."

She also noted that this was "a critical year" for setting assessments because of a state law, which applied only to Nassau and New York City, that prevents assessments from being raised more than 6 percent a year. If the assessments of some homes are too low, some officials fear they will remain too low forever because of this limitation. Property owners who believe their assessments are too high can file grievances with the Nassau Assessment Review Commission to get their values reduced.

Officials already have pledged to fix the problems with vacant lots in residential neighborhoods. The lots were valued as residential property but taxed at commercial rate under state law, resulting in huge tax increases for the own- ers. Local and state officials have pledged to change the law to allow the lots to be taxed as residential property.

Officials also have said they expect to change about 350 waterfront properties after Democrats on the county Board of Assessors maintained that expensive homes along the shoreline were underassessed.