Transcript of Drew Biedermann's Interview with Nassau County Tax Assessor Harvey Levinson on Uniondale Taxes

Q: With the change in the tax code, how would that affect the per pupil dollar amounts Uniondale School District students would get?

A: The question, I think, is if they build at the hub, and produce millions and millions of school revenue, the commercial class would pay most of those taxes, and the condominuim class would pay also. That’s what’s known as class two. That would reduce the percentage of the pie paid by homeowners. So when you reduce the percentage, that would reduce the school tax bill substantially for every home in Uniondale. It’s hard to estimate it, but it wouldn’t be too far fetched to say the school bills could go down by maybe forty or fifty percent from what they presently are now if all of this property got added to the tax rolls.

Simply put, the way to reduce property taxes is to have new construction, because you cannot rely on the state to give us additional state aid in any large numbers, because the state doesn’t have the money to do that. And there are issues whether we get our fair share of state aid. But the way to really get reduced school property taxes is very simple. You just have to do construction. But the problem is its very hard to get new construction since there’s not much land to develop in Nassau County.

But in Uniondale, they fortunately, as a quirk I suppose, historically the district line included all the way over to Mitchell Field. And as a result, they will get all of this tax revenue. And so the issue that I raised is, wouldn’t this be a good timing, assuming The Hub gets approved, to change the way the commercial taxes are distributed to the different school districts.

For example, North Merrick, which is very close to the Coliseum area, gets just pennies of commercial taxes, because there’s very few businesses in North Merrick. Uniondale presently gets a lot of tax revenue from businesses, but if they got all of The Hub, it would reduce their tax burden significantly. It would go down a lot. Maybe fifty percent, maybe more, because you don’t know the extent of the building that’s going on there. From what I can see, they’re building a whole new village there of apartments, condominuims, office buildings, coliseum and the like. All of that will probably, not probably, will generate a lot of new tax revenue.

So my plan is, it goes back to 2004. But I was waiting for The Hub to be announced cause now I have a place to use my bully pulpit is to say, “Look, we should share all the commercial value. Roosevelt Field, all of the malls, all of the commercial property should be shared among all of the school districts, with one caveat. Uniondale, where the property is located, or wherever there is commercial property within a school district, should get a disproportionate amount of the school tax revenue because they have to suffer the consequences of having it in their community.”

Now it may not be any suffering at all, especially Uniondale, because Uniondale is really south of Front Street. It really isn’t north of Hempstead Turnpike.

Q: Where the University, Nassau, all the schools are?

A: Right. I don’t really think the community will be impacted significantly, any more than Carle Place, and the surrounding areas will have issues with traffic, and other issues. So Uniondale is not alone. It’s a pretty simple concept that I suggested in ’04. Let’s change the whole tax system in Nassau County. Now in order to do it requires an act of the state legislature. The county legislature cannot do this. State of New York must change the way we tax.

Now part of this plan is to remove all property tax from owners of single family homes in Nassau County. All of them. And they would be taxed by an income tax. So it’s an iconoclastic and unique idea, but I believe it makes sense. So what we do is we merge the commercial taxes, and everyone gets a piece of the pie. But Uniondale should not worry. They’re gonna get more than anybody else, but they won’t get all of it. But they will also pick up the Miracle Mile in Manhassett. They will pick up the Great Neck commercial value, cause it will all be merged.

This is the way it’s done in New York City. We have all of these levels of government here. We have too much government. I sound like a republican, but I’m not. We have too much government in Nassau County. And the way to reduce it is to change the system. And the other part is, to eliminate property taxes entirely for single family homes, if you live in a home and pay based upon an income tax.

That’s my plan in a nutshell, and I think people are actually talking about it because they recognize the system is presently broken. And let me give you another example.

If you live in Island Trees, in a Levitt home, you pay thirty percent less school taxes than the identical Levitt home in Levittown, New York. And you’re both in the same zip code, Levittown. Because of the commercial valuation, other unique factors, the people in Levittown, and they don’t even know it, that they’re paying thirty percent more, because no other political person has ever told them. And they don’t get their neighbor’s school bill, or property tax bills, at all. They don’t know what anybody else is paying. The information is on my website, and you can see it. But most people are not even going to look at it.

And so, the present system is broken, because people in the same value home are paying substantially more school taxes than in another community, the neighboring community. And that’s wrong. So if you have a four hundred thousand dollar home, everyone should pay the same school property taxes. But it can’t be fixed, other than accepting the current system is badly broken, and should be ended and stop school property taxes, and replace it with an income tax.