When residents of the Amityville School District voted to approve the district’s 2003/04 budget last spring, they voted to accept an increase in spending for the school year of approximately $3.1 million; a 6.2 percent increase that was anticipated to bring with it a tax-rate increase of 8.7 percent.

Instead, Amityville school residents (those living in the Babylon portion of the district) will see a 13.2 percent increase when they open their bills next month.

Wait... before you start blaming the school district, read on.

Amityville’s approved budget for 2003-04 is $54.4 million. The district expects to get $15.5 million of that from state aid, fund balances and sources of income other than real property taxes. That leaves a tax levy—that portion of the school budget that must be collected through real property taxes—at $38.9 million. That number has not changed.

"The Amityville School District is not asking the taxpayers for any more money than they approved in May," said Jack Waters, Amityville’s assistant superintendent of finance and operations as he expressed concern that taxpayers in Amityville will not understand that the increases they see are not the result of any changes made to the budget they approved in May. Instead, he said, Amityville residents are being asked by New York State to pick up a larger portion of the levy pie.

That reality is the result of the state’s equalization rate, a rate that is designed to bring equity to the tax system when a school district includes residents in two counties. In essence, it determines what percentage of the entire school levy the residents in each county are responsible for paying.

This year, the rate shifted the tax burden away from the Oyster Bay residents within the school district, and on to the Babylon Town residents—to the tune of $3 million. In dollars and cents, it means Babylon Town residents are being asked to pick up an additional $3 million, while most—though not all—Oyster Bay residents will see little or no increase at all.

"Equalization rates are set each year by the New York State Office of Real Property Services (ORPS), and determine the percentage of taxes to be borne by taxpayers in Oyster Bay and Babylon," said Waters. "This year they said Amityville residents should pay significantly more."

Oyster Bay residents paid $10.3 million on a tax levy of $35.8 million last year. This year, they will pay $10.1 million on a $38.9 tax levy.

Babylon’s taxpayers, on the other hand, paid $25.5 million on a $35.8 tax levy last year. This year they are responsible for $28.8 million on a $38.9 tax levy.

The shifting of equalization rates is nothing new to the Amityville School District, and in year’s past the rates have been watched closely as the budget process proceeded. Amityville joins two other school districts on Long Island, Cold Spring Harbor and Farmingdale, who must apply equalization rates to their tax rate figures.

But this year’s shift in Amityville is historical in the depth of its swing.

"The state equalization rates that were given to me this year caused an unequal apportionment of the tax levy," said Waters. "I argued that to the ORPS Board, but they did not respond," he said.

Waters said he went before the ORPS Board in Albany to argue that the rates failed to distribute the levy increase equitably, but walked away from that hearing unable to sway the board.

"They granted a change to Cold Spring Harbor and then decided to go with the recommended rates for Amityville," said Waters. "The bottom line is I still have to collect $38.9 million (from taxpayers) to run the district, regardless of the numbers the state gives us."

Michael Bernard, Babylon Town Assessor, said he argued the case for a second time in Albany last Wednesday when the ORPS Board was planning to vote on final equalization rates. Ultimately, they left the numbers as they were.

"We argued that it was disproportionately unfair to residents of Babylon, and not reflective of where the market stands," said Bernard. "Once again the argument fell on deaf ears," he added.

Bernard explained that the state must base its numbers and figures on the values of homes as determined through recent sales.

"Taxes are proportionate, based on home values," he said. "But the ORPS Board are big proponents of reassessment," said Bernard.

Nassau County recently conducted a court-ordered countywide reassessment, while Babylon has not had one since 1954. And, while no public official would go on record saying they believed the equalization rates were set to reward Nassau for its reassessment work, many pointed to the issue as one way of explaining what the state did with the rates.

Some Oyster Bay residents in the Amityville school district will, however, see a significant increase in school taxes this year, but that will be the result of the County’s reassessments, not school taxes. Waters said it is generally accepted that one third of Nassau’s residents saw a decrease, one-third saw an increase, and the other third remained stable.

Some Massapequa residents said the system is fair and that it helps to overcome the value they are losing on their homes as a result of being in the Amityville School District as opposed to Massapequa.

"If you look at the real estate ads, you can see how our homes are selling for much less and have not increased in value as much as those homes in our area that are in the Massapequa school district," said Charles Klassert, a resident of East Massapequa. "We have to be compensated in some way for that loss."

"It’s a house of mystery as to how they do this," said Donald Cardwell, of Massapequa, a resident who has watched the equalization rates as they fluctuated for years. "It’s supposed to be fair; whether it is, I don’t know."

Waters will discuss the issue in depth with concerned residents of the district at a regularly scheduled board meeting in December which will be held at the Amityville Middle School.