Long Island’s Nassau County is getting a new property tax assessor. What can local property owners expect now?
Will a change in assessor make a difference in policy and the size of your property tax bills? What can you do to lower your assessment, and fix your bill, even if the latest promises fail to be realized?
Nassau County Appoints A New Acting Assessor
Nassau County’s Executive Bruce Blakeman has just promoted assistant assessor Matthew Cronin to become acting assessor.
Matthew Cronin has told the news his goal is to make Nassau County the more equitable and fair assessing jurisdiction in NY.
What Does The Assessor Do?
It is the assessor’s job to create assessments for each commercial and residential property in the county each year.
Nassau County is the largest assessing district in the state of New York, with the exception of NYC itself. Nassau includes 423,000 properties. Which the assessor’s office currently values at a total of around $264B.
The assessor’s office determines a tax assessed value for each property. This should be reviewed each year.
Then, that value is multiplied by various tax rates which make up the annual property tax bill for each property in the jurisdiction.
Can We Expect The Property Tax System To Be Fixed?
New York is already famous for some of the highest property taxes in the nation, if not the world. It is also infamous for having one of the most broken and disparate systems.
One in which almost half of the bills sent out each year are incorrect. Often overinflated. While the biggest multibillion dollar corporations, construction firms, and those spending the most on new construction properties get massive tax breaks. Which are funded by the less wealthy property owners and small businesses.
The problems are systemic, and deeply ingrained. So many individuals and organizations rely on this, that it has become very hard to change.
Promises of change are made in every election cycle. Yet, no real change seems to happen.
Of course, what is deemed ‘fair and equitable’ may also be hotly debated by many. So, let’s not get our hopes too high that we’ll see any major changes anytime soon,
How To Get A Fair Assessment In This Broken System
While we all hope that the new acting assessor, and whoever follows him in this position, do make positive and meaningful changes to at least fix what is broken, history has taught us that we cannot count on it.
Fortunately, with the help of Property Tax Adjusters, Ltd. Nassau County property owners can get the help they need to exercise their rights to demand fair and accurate assessments, and to reduce their annual tax bills accordingly.