Nassau County Reverses Erroneous $1.165M Tax Bill to Tax-Exempt Notre Dame Parish in New Hyde Park

Usanewsonline.com desk: To address the latest in a series of tax bill blunders that have already cost Nassau County taxpayers millions, the Nassau County Legislature voted unanimously on Monday, Feb. 27 to rescind $1,165,324.28 in tax bills that were erroneously issued to the Notre Dame Parish, a tax-exempt Catholic church in New Hyde Park.

The Notre Dame Parish correction was the largest of a series of Correction of Error petitions that the Legislature approved during its most recent meeting – and 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.

To date, the County has approved paying 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.

“Allowing these entirely avoidable mistakes to make it as far as they did is an egregious example of government waste and the epitome of negligence,” Nassau County Legislator Debra Mulé (D – Freeport) said. “Unfortunately, the Blakeman administration’s track record of errors and questionable assessment decisions gives us little faith that there are not more errors on the way. It’s time to get to the bottom of this by ordering 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 waste of even more taxpayer money in the future.” (Press Release)