All sides agree: Grieve your Nassau tax assessment (Updated)

County postcard about grieving assessment

Nassau Republicans Monday are holding a news conference to tell residents to grieve their property tax assessments even though Nassau County Executive Laura Curran has frozen values for this year

The frozen roll, Republicans say, do not reflect any reductions homeowners received last year as a result of protesting their assessment nor any reductions they could continue to receive this year  until the 21-22 assessment roll is final in April. This is the roll that will be used for October's school tax bills and Jan. 2022 general tax bills.

(Nassau's 15-month assessment cycle is unlike any other assessing jurisdiction in the state and is, without doubt, the most complicated. To explain: the assessments issued a year ago -- in January, 2020 -- do not become final until April 2021 and are not used for tax bills until Oct. 2021).

Curran, a Democrat running for re-election this year, already urged residents in a county-wide postcard in December to grieve their assessments, beginning Jan. 4.

Nassau Legis. John Ferretti, (R-Levittown),  a critic of Curran's 2018 reassessment, advised residents on his Facebook page Feb. 10,  "GRIEVE GRIEVE GRIEVE. You have until April 30th! I will be posting some dates of additional assessment grievance workshops soon! Grieve yourself. Easy as 1, 2, 3."

Even Bellmore Attorney Jeff Gold, a Democrat who supports Curran's reassessment and a critic of Ferretti, has advised the 31,000 members of his Facebook page called "Nassau Grieve Your Tax Assessment Free" to continue to grieve,  after seeing the many reductions that his members had received so far this year.

Ferretti actually explained why homeowners should continue to protest:

"Ladies and Gentlemen," he said on his Facebook page.

"The County Executive's Assessment Review Commission is MASS SETTLING assessment challenges. They are handing out virtually automatic reductions if you grieve by applying a lower level of assessment. Yes you are correct this is exactly what the previous administration did to break the system. Yes you are correct this is what she promised not to do."

This is all public record; it was part of a lengthy assessment hearing in January.

Ferretti had asked Jeremy May, vice-chairman of the county's Assessment Review commission, which is the county agency that decides assessment protests, how many offers of reductions ARC had made on the 21-22 roll:

"About 200,000," May said.

200,000!! Assuming the county had about the same 236,372 protests on this roll --year two of the reassessment --  as it had on the 20-21 roll -- the first to use the reassessment values -- that means ARC was offering reductions to 85 percent of the property owners who grieved.

That reduction rate is higher than any reduction rate ARC offered under former County Executive Edward Mangano, a Republican heavily criticized by Curran and fellow Democrats for offering mass assessment reductions after he froze the assessment roll for eight years.

UPDATE: The county told Newsday Monday that  219,776 residential grievances were filed for the 21-22 tax year (ie, filed last year). If that is a correct number, that means 200,000 offers of reduction translates into a reduction rate of 91 percent!!--a much higher reduction rate than under Mangano.

Another note: Athough Democratic legislators Monday complained about "unjustified refunds" during the Mangano reduction program, there essentially were no refunds. That was the point of the assessment reduction program -- to settle grievances before tax bills went out to eliminate the $30 million in residential refunds the county was paying on average every year. 

Though the mass settlement program skewed the assessement roll, resulting in higher taxes for those homeowners who did not protest their values, the program successfully eliminated all but a few thousand dollars each year in tax refunds that the county had to pay.

Under questioning by Ferretti, during the January hearing, May also acknowledged that ARC was using a level of assessment of .95 percent on the 21-22 roll -- a lower level than the one percent level of assessment used for the previous year.

Level of assessment is another complicated Nassau calculation. It is the fraction of the market value of the property that is used to calculate tax bills.

Tax attorneys generally agree that lowering the level of assessment automatically results in an assessment reduction for most properties that have filed challenges. But homeowners who do not grieve do not get this reduction.

ARC under Mangano came under heavy criticism for lowering the level of assessment every year.  Although Nassau homes were allegedly assessed at 25 percent of market value, lower levels of assessment were used for homeowners who protested.

It made the whole assessment system incomprehensible to the layman.

Ferretti attempted to get May to acknowledge that lowering the level of assessment from 1 percent to .95 percent would result in an assessment reduction for most property owners who filed grievances in the 21-22 tax year.

But May would not be pinned down.

"The level of assessment by itself would not guarantee a reduction," May said.

Ferretti said, "You'd agree that decreasing the level of assessment for ARC purposes would certainly lead to a larger amount of offers than if you didn't."

May responded, " I could not say that happens 100 percent of the time, but I think that's generally correct."