When it comes to taxes, it’s only natural that any hard-working individual would want to hold on to as much of their income as possible. However, sometimes disputes will arise, when that happens, you can either grin and bear it or go the legal route and grieve your taxes.
The Village of Farmingdale recently concluded their annual Tax Grievance period, where local residents who wish to dispute their property taxes—which are based upon the assessed value of their property—can turn in the necessary paperwork to do so, according to Mayor Ralph Ekstrand.
“You can submit the grievance to the Village Hall in writing…it doesn’t have to be in person,” he said during the meeting. “The paperwork is then evaluated by our consultants, who are professional assessors, and if they noted that something has been unfairly judged they will recommend a reduction in that resident’s taxes. But if it’s very close, there wouldn’t be a reduction. It’s a very stable process, and if something stands out we will act on it.”
Ekstrand noted that most villages in Nassau County rely on the county itself to handle the assessment of the property value of their homeowners; these assessments, in turn, are used to calculate how much property tax each resident must pay. However, while adhering to this system for many years, the Village of Farmingdale eventually decided to strike out on their own, hiring an outside firm to handle their property assessments instead.
“In 2010, we used what is called the New York State Homestead Act, and we became our own assessing agent,” he said. “We assess people on the market value of their property, which changes every year.”
Ekstrand said that one of the main reasons the village decided to handle their own local assessments was because of the high number of successful grievances—known as a tax certiorari—filed by home and business owners seeking to dispute the value of their home as assessed by the county; the higher the assessed value, the higher the taxes.
If successful in their efforts, a resident or business owner is entitled to a refund of all the back taxes they were initially overcharged. The process of grieving their assessment, however, often involves legal proceedings that can take several years, and once settled, a village will find their cut of the refund they have to pay out to take a substantial bite out of their coffers,” Ekstrand said.
“We were getting killed on commercial tax certioraris,” he said. “As an example, there’s a building in Farmingdale on the corner of Main Street and Conklin Street…a few years ago,
Nassau County had that valued at $5 million, but when the owners went to court against Nassau County, it was found to be worth $2.54 million. The share of that refund that the village was libel for was quite significant…in fact, in the first two years that I was a trustee we paid out over $600,000 in tax certs alone.”
Village Administrator Brian Harty said that, since adopting the Homestead Act, Farmingdale Village has enjoyed a great deal more stability in their resident assessments, and in turn, a vast reduction in the amount people who grieve their taxes.
“The board made a conscious decision to do it on a Homestead (residential) and non-Homestead (commercial) basis,” he said. “We’ve had very few tax certs since the implementation of the Homestead and non-Homestead portions of this, where everything was reassessed. We reassess on a regular basis. People still do file tax certs and we still do make payments, but it’s nowhere near what it used to be.”
Getting nailed with regular large tax certiorari bills can play havoc with village finances. Once Farmingdale started handling their own assessments, their budget became a great deal more stable as a result, Harty said.
“We no longer have these huge fluctuations from year to year in grievances and assessments because we try to be as accurate as possible…we assess according to fair market value each and every year,” he said. ”It’s fair to residents, and it’s fair to the government, because governments need to know what they’re going to run their business on, and having
these wide swings as we’ve had in the past have been eliminated in the Village of Farmingdale.”
Tentative property assessments went out to village residents on Feb. 1; those wishing to contest the assessed value of their home had until the third Tuesday of that month to put in a request for a tax certiorari, explained Ekstrand.
“We really only have to pay out on a very small amount of grievances these days, because we try to pay very close attention to the values,” he said. “However, if something is egregious we will certainly issue a reduction in taxes.”
