This year a record number of Nassau County property owners have appealed their property taxes. Even more are likely to take issue with their assessments and bills as they realize the full impact of the new changes.
Discover Long Island just launched a new advertising campaign in partnership with Nassau County and Suffolk County. The new ‘BeLong’ campaign wants to attract new visitors and make people feel like it is a family destination where people belong. The ads will run online, outdoors, via broadcast and social media. The problem of course isn’t that no one knows Long Island exists. It’s that Long Island is probably most famous for its high property taxes. Not exactly a great slogan for either drawing Instagram influencers, investors, workers, businesses or new residents. A stark contrast to other very affluent and popular cities which have largely become magnets due to not having annual property taxes.
In a perfect world, it might be interesting to see what the outcome would be of simply lowering property taxes and letting that speak for itself, instead of taking more to spend on making it sound like a great place to be.
Fios 1 News reports that Nassau County property owners are not only seeing bills double, but in some cases quadruple. Even with a phased in roll out over a few year, that could mean those eligible for savings, don’t get them for years, while those whose bills are going up may just see even more increases tagged on during this period. On the bright side, perhaps this has reached an urgent enough crisis point that everyone will stand up and make something happen.
News 12 reports that a record 235,000 Nassau County property owners filed a grievance this year. That is encouraging. Yet, it also means that taxing authorities are wasting even more money on assessments, appeals and refunds, which could have been avoided with correct assessments in the first place. Sadly, the extra burden of these expenses will all be dumped on those who failed to file a property tax grievance before the extended deadline.
Long Island is great. If we truly want to continue to belong and enjoy it, and have good surroundings, and make it a place our children may return to after so many leaving, it is going to take a lot of change from tax assessments, to bills, to how money is spent. There are a lot of other distractions in life, but no one of them may matter without a home or job.