Nassau Standard

The Nassau County Legislature has taken the first steps toward correcting Department of Assessment errors that caused a tax-exempt Catholic church in New Hyde Park to receive nearly $1.2 million in erroneous tax bills.

It was among the Correction of Error petitions that advanced through the Legislature’s Finance and Rules committees on Monday, Feb. 6. The $1,165,324.28 in erroneous tax bills that were issued to the Notre Dame Parish, a tax-exempt Catholic church in New Hyde Park, are the latest in a series of costly assessment errors that Nassau County taxpayers have been forced to pick up the bill for in recent months.

In October 2022, the Minority Caucus identified 842 property owners who had been overcharged by a total of approximately $1.55 million because the five-year phase-in of the 2020-2021 reassessment was not applied correctly to the impacted second-half school tax bills. Subsequently, the Minority Caucus discovered and revealed that Notre Dame Parish had erroneously been issued a school tax bill for $676,633.77. Weeks later, the error was replicated on their general tax bills in the sum of $488,690.51.

Once the corrections receive final approval from the full Legislature, the County will have paid out more than $2.715 million to fix specific, avoidable tax bill mistakes. In accordance with the County Guaranty, school districts will receive the full amount of their tax levy because Nassau is required to absorb any shortfall that is created by the correction of erroneous tax bills.  “It is deeply disappointing that a series of avoidable and preventable tax bill errors have already deprived Nassau County residents of nearly $3 million that could have been applied toward public services or tax relief,” Nassau County Legislator Debra Mulé (D – Freeport) said. “Despite the administration’s promises of no future mistakes, the Notre Dame Parish fiasco illustrates why we have no confidence that additional major and costly errors are looming. County Executive Blakeman must immediately order an independent investigation into how these errors occurred, how the Department of Assessment missed them, and the steps that should be taken to prevent the needless waste of even more taxpayer money.”

Original source can be found here.