Like Hempstead, Oyster Bay Tax Receiver says Assessor admitted errors

                                                                                     

Oyster Bay Tax Receiver Jeffrey Pravato

Yep. The Nassau County Assessor's office acknowledged thousands of errors in the assessment roll that will be used to generate next month's school property tax bills, Oyster Bay Town Receiver Jeffrey Pravato  confirmed today.

"The Nassau County Assessors Office notified us that approximately 3,500 property owners in the Town of Oyster Bay will be forced to pay incorrect tax bills by December 10th, " Provato said in a statement.

"The new assessment roll continues to present significant problems and is now negatively impacting residents wallets by forcing homeowners to overpay their property taxes and then wait over a year for a refund. It’s wrong!”

On Monday, Hempstead Town Supervisor Don Clavin and Receiver of Taxes Jeannine Driscoll held a news conference to call out County Assessor David Moog, saying he acknowledged in a conference call last week that the new asssessment roll contains 12,000 errors countywide: 6,000 in the Town of Hempstead.

They both blasted Moog, saying he had a year to get the numbers right following County Executive Laura Curran's countywide reassessment, but thousands of residents will now be facing bills based on erroneous assessments.  

"I call on the Nassau assessor to fix the errors immediately," Driscoll said. "In the midst of a pandemic, taxpayers already experiencing economic distress and contending with health concerns. The last thing they need to do is overpay their taxes."

The assessment roll will be the first time the new values will be used as the basis for property tax bills.

Normally, school tax bills bills go out in early October and are due in November.  This year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed back the issue date to Nov 1, with the first payment due Dec. 10.

Curran responded that Clavin and Driscoll were peddling "deceitful misinformation aimed to scare and mislead our residents." She also accused them of politicizing the pandemic and said "its embarrassing for them."

She did not deny there were errors in the roll, but her spokeman later said there were no errors. "It's make believe," he said.

Nassau third town receiver Charles Berman, the only Democrat among the three elected receivers, was not contacted for comment.

Last year, he agreed on the record with the other town receivers that some seniors were overbilled on their sewer taxes because abatements were missing from the assessment roll.

But Berman backed down and admitted he was wrong when fellow Democrat Curran publicly said he did not understand the accounting for abatements. A few months later, Berman was renominated by Nassau Democrats to run for re-election as North Hempstead's tax receiver.