A tax bill for more than $1.1 million wrongly sent to the Notre Dame Parish in New Hyde Park was reversed by the Nassau County Legislature Monday.
Earlier this month, the Legislature’s Finance and Rules Committee advanced multiple Correction of Error petitions that amounted to over $2 million in erroneous tax bills. Of that total, the bill sent to the parish, which is tax-exempt, was $1,165,324.68.
Last winter, the parish was sent two different tax bills for its 2023 general taxes. The initial Nassau Assessment Department error led to a $16.7 million assessment on the property.
The Diocese of Rockville Centre, which owns the property, received the bill. State law exempts houses of worship, which are nonprofits, from property taxes.
Town of North Hempstead Receiver of Taxes Charles Berman, who was told of the error by the diocese, wrote at the time to acting County Assessor Matthew Cronin that the county failed to apply a full property tax.
In November, Berman told Blank Slate Media the parish, located at 45 Mayfair Road, sold a single-family home on its property for $630,000, the amount the county should have removed the tax exemption for rather than using the value of the entire property.
County Legislator Debra Mulé (D–Freeport) was critical of county leadership for what she said were avoidable mistakes.
“Unfortunately, the Blakeman administration’s track record of errors and questionable assessment decisions gives us little faith that there are not more errors on the way,” Mulé said in a statement. “It’s time to get to the bottom of this by ordering an independent investigation into how these errors occurred, how the Department of Assessment missed them, and the steps that should be taken to prevent the waste of even more taxpayer money in the future.”
In October 2022, the Minority Caucus identified 842 property owners who had been overcharged by a total of approximately $1.55 million because the five-year phase-in of the 2020-2021 reassessment was not applied correctly to the impacted second-half school tax bills.
Cronin, an Amityville resident, was appointed acting assessor by Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman in May last year. Prior to his current role, Cronin was an assistant assessor with previous experience in the Department of Assessment.
He served as the county’s commercial and industrial assessor in 2020 before being promoted.
Cronin was appointed after Blakeman, a Republican, did not renew the contract for acting Assessor Robin Laveman, who was appointed to fill the shoes of her predecessor, David Moog, by former County Executive Laura Curran, a Democrat.
