It's done: Blakeman orders tax grievance deadline extended to April 30

                                                                                   

First, Democrats on the county legislature last month asked Republican County Executive Bruce Blakeman to extend the March 1 deadline for Nassau property owners to grieve their property tax assessment to May 2 because of covid-related disruptions to the housing market.

Then Republican legislators on Monday introduced their own resolution to extend the deadline to April 30, citing the late mailing of the notices of tentative assessment which, by law, must be published on the first business day in January for the new year's assessment roll.

Traditionally, those notices were mailed to property owners during the first week in January. 

But former Democratic County Executive Laura Curran's administration pushed the mailing deadline to Jan. 30 by citing a legislative mandate that the tentative assessments must be mailed by the end of January, not just posted online.

At the time, Presiding Officer Rich Nicolello (R-New Hyde Park) called Curran's interpretation of the legislative law  "laughable" because the point was to require mailed notices.

But newly installed Blakeman apparently followed the Curran rule because this year's notices didn't go out until the end of January or Feb. 1.  At least one property owner complained they got their notice in the mail yesterday, Feb. 7.

Republicans contended the new Blakeman administration had found 160,000 errors in the letters prepared by the former administration and those mistakes had to be corrected.

It seems odd that there were so many errors when Curran froze the assessment roll again this year, meaning this year's assessments for the most part should be the same as last year. 

Don't know if there were errors or not, but every new administration always blames the previous administration for problems it encounters.

Regardless, all 19 legislators on Monday voted to extend the deadline to April 30.

But they can't do it alone. They needed Blakeman to agree to the extension and direct the county's Assessment Review Commission to extend the deadline.

He did it today, according to an Instagram post.

His press office did not respond to an inquiry yesterday on whether Blakeman would order the deadline extended.