The East Williston school district has joined 17 other school districts in suing Nassau County for allowing tax exemptions they say have left them with budget shortfalls, the district school board announced Monday.
The lawsuit, expected to be filed this week, stems from the county’s decision in September to remove from the district’s tax rolls several Long Island Power Authority properties it had failed to exempt from taxes for 20 years.
“Once again, the actions of Nassau County have jeopardized school district’s ability to finance programs and services to students,” East Williston school board President Mark Kamberg said Monday night.
After discovering the LIPA properties had not been properly exempted from taxes for several years, the county gave the utility a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes, or PILOT, agreement for the parcels, Kamberg said.
That resulted in a reduction in the district’s tax levy after it was finalized in August, Assistant Superintendent for Business Jacqueline Pirro said.
Kamberg said the county assured school districts they would still get their full amount of tax revenue, as LIPA was supposed to make PILOT payments directly to the districts to make up the difference.
But those payments haven’t come, PIrro said, leaving the district with an estimated $706,000 revenue shortfall.
There is also no binding, written agreement with LIPA for the payments.
“I have nothing concrete to go by to project and plan because I haven’t received any of the money,” Pirro said.
Exempting the LIPA properties takes away revenue from the utility tax class, Pirro said, but the county has so far presented no plan as to how residential and commercial taxpayers might make up the loss.
A LIPA spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit, but said the utility has paid what it owes under state law.
The law governing LIPA says its PILOT payments can’t increase more than 2 percent over the previous year.
The Nassau County attorney’s office respond to a request for comment.
Jostyn Hernandez, a spokesman for Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos, whose office is one of the entities that processes PILOT payments, said he couldn’t speak to the timing of the payments or why they had or hadn’t been paid.
He said LIPA determined it would make PILOT payments less than the amount the school districts had budgeted for, and the issue was how the utility would make up the difference.
The East Williston school board also announced Monday it has reached an agreement in contract negotiations with the district’s administrators’ union.
The three-year agreement gives administrators a 2-percent raise each year, starting retroactively in July 2015 and ending in June 2018.
Starting in July 2017, administrators will pay 25 percent of their health-care premiums and the district will pay flat amounts for health insurance buyback payments, a cost savings for the district of 50 percent, Kamberg said.
Kamberg called the agreement “mutually beneficial” for the district and the administrators.
