Port Jeff mayor: LIPA, its taxes needed

A lawsuit on behalf of the Long Island Power Authority seeking to reduce the utility's tax bill for its Port Jefferson power plant could have drastic consequences for the community, Port Jefferson Mayor Margot Garant said Thursday.

Garant made the statement at a community forum before about 200 residents, where she and other local leaders also called on plant owner National Grid to modernize and repower the plant. The plant operates at only 5 percent of its capacity, Garant said.

The plant's viability - and its tax contribution - are critical for Port Jefferson, Garant said.

The taxes are especially important for the Port Jefferson Union Free School District, which derives about 40 percent of its revenue from the plant, said Mark Doyle, vice president of the Port Jefferson School Board.

"It would be very difficult for us to recover from any drastic cut that we might have," Doyle said. "It puts us in a difficult position."

National Grid, owner of Port Jefferson and Northport power plants, filed suit on LIPA's behalf in State Supreme Court on Oct. 15 against the towns of Brookhaven and Huntington to argue that its power plants in those towns are assessed too high. National Grid pays taxes on the plants - $65.5 million in Northport and $26.1 million in Port Jefferson - and passes along the cost as an expense to LIPA.

LIPA pays about $2.4 million to Port Jefferson Village, which is nearly 30 percent of the village's budget, and $14 million to the Port Jefferson School District, Garant said.

She urged National Grid to reinvest in the Port Jefferson plant rather than push for a lower assessment. She added that Suffolk County police and local library and fire services also depend on the tax revenue. "This is really striking the heart of Port Jefferson Village," she said.

LIPA chairman Howard Steinberg, a Manhattan corporate lawyer who lives in Great Neck, said at a recent LIPA trustee meeting that the plants are old and overvalued. He noted that taxes make up too high a portion of customer bills - 13 percent, he said, three times the national average. He called the overassessments and their impacts on bills "just fundamentally unfair to the vast majority of our customers who are subsidizing other towns and school districts and not getting any benefit."

Steinberg said LIPA is "not seeking refunds of the hundreds of millions of excess taxes that we've paid over the years" and is "willing to sit down with" the towns to discuss the issue.