Surprise! Mastic Beach homeowners will get refund checks

Mastic Beach residents are in for a surprise — a check in their mailboxes.

Brookhaven Town officials said they are returning the roughly $1 million surplus to Mastic Beach homeowners after the village was dissolved two years ago. The money will be divided between refunds for about 5,200 homeowners and funding for capital improvements, officials said.

The average homeowner will receive $172, although it’s wasn’t immediately known when everyone will get their refunds.

The money comes from delinquent property taxes owed to the village before it dissolved, outstanding revenue, and funds left over after paying expenses, town officials said.

Mastic Beach in 2017 became the first Long Island village to disband since Pine Valley did in 1991.

Former Mastic Beach Mayor Maura Spery, who has already received her mailed check of $125, said Monday one reason for the refund is residents were doubly taxed on garbage collection fees.

She said residents paid a $300 garbage tax but paid another trash fee to Brookhaven after the town regained control of the former municipality.

Brookhaven board members approved the refunds last Thursday along with other expenditures to refurbish the hamlet.

One project will create a parking lot and improve landscaping at Marina 5. A new boardwalk will be added to the fishing pier at the end of Cranberry Road, near where environmentally sensitive grass plantings will be placed.

Officials said the dock is historic and a place where residents have fished and crabbed for generations.

“We want to keep that going for future generations,” Brookhaven Town Councilman Dan Panico, who represents the district, said last week. “We’re going to bring the area up so that it doesn’t look like a rundown former marina, but something that adds to the community.”

Some of the surplus funds will go to preserve open space and to the town highway department to pay for roadway paving, Panico said.