Mangano: Don't trust Nassau's property tax information

Can Nassau taxpayers trust the public information that the county provides about their property tax assessments?

County Executive Edward Mangano Friday said they can't, citing incorrect property data provided for his own Bethpage house.

"This highlights all that's wrong with the current tax assessment system," said Mangano, who campaigned on fixing the county's assessments. "The system's broken and this happens to a lot of people. That's why I'm reforming it."

Asked how Nassau residents could trust the assessor's department if the public Web site is inaccurate, Randolph Yunker, spokesman for the county assessor's office, said, "I would encourage people to contact the Department of Assessment to arrange a meeting with one of the field assessors or they can go to their home to go over their property records to make sure everything is accurate."

Despite the errors on Mangano's home, Yunker stressed that the county executive has been properly assessed and "has paid his fair share of property taxes." However, it is impossible to tell from information on any of Nassau's multiple public computer assessment systems that Mangano's house is assessed correctly.

Newsday reported Thursday that Mangano's house appeared to be underassessed: Neither the Nassau assessor's public Web site nor the site for the county's Assessment Review Commission includes a half-bath or central air-conditioning that town building records show are part of his 3,690-square-foot house.

Those improvements, if not included in the assessment, could add as much as $25,000 to the market price of his two-story home, recently valued by the county at $682,200.

"I am advised that the fixtures that you mention . . . have been and always were included in the assessed value of my home," said Mangano, who was billed $14,272 in town and general taxes this year. "I have always maintained that I'm overtaxed."

County officials have advised residents every January in assessment notices mailed to their homes to check their property information on the assessor's Web site "mynassauproperty.com" and the ARC site, while Yunker said last week that all property information should be in those systems.

The half-bath appears to be listed on only one outmoded Wang computer system - which was supposed to be dismantled in 2004 - that is accessible to the public only on the fourth floor of 240 Old Country Rd. in Mineola. And the air-conditioning does not appear on any public computers.

"Unfortunately, the public Web site did not accurately reflect the inventory discrepancies that were reported," Yunker said.

He said the county uses three computer systems to produce the official assessment roll and the information on all systems is supposed to be the same, except for recent updates.

"The problem is when you have a number of people entering notes into the computer system and there is no consistency in how you should refer to [improvements]," Yunker said.

For example, the assessor's Web site, mynassauproperty.com, lists Mangano's house as having "CNTRL HEAT." Yunker said that means it also has central air-conditioning even though comparable homes on the site are listed as having "CNTRL HTAC" when air-conditioning is part of their inventory.

Mangano said he has not challenged his taxes since the county's first reassessed in 2003. "I've chosen to reform for all taxpayers rather than participate in an error-ridden system," he said.

But former Assessor Harvey Levinson said, "The bottom line is the people look at the Web site. People don't come into the office. You look at the Web site. That's how people get their information."