High school district moves ahead with District 24 lawsuit

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The Central High School District Board of Education voted on June 13 to authorize a lawsuit against District 24 for about $2 million that it withheld from the high school district for the 2016–17 school year, after the districts disputed what was owed based on the uncertainty of the taxable status of the Green Acres Mall property.

“The school board believes it has a fiduciary responsibility to collect any and all money it is owed,” said Bill Heidenreich, superintendent of the Central High School District.

Ed Fale, superintendent for District 24, said that district officials are “reviewing it with their attorneys,” and cannot comment further on pending litigation.

Centralized high school districts in New York are funded by taxes collected from the elementary school districts. The Green Acres Mall tax break reduced the amount that District 30 owed to the high school district, and increased District 13’s and District 24’s share. The payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement, or PILOT, was revoked by the Hempstead Industrial Development Agency in April after months of public outcry, but the mall has not returned to paying regular taxes.

Attorneys for District 24 suggested at a joint-boards meeting on May 4 that the high school district has the authority to consider properties under PILOT agreements as taxable, which would have normalized the tax burden across the elementary districts. The $2 million withheld by District 24 has been sitting in an escrow account for about a month.

The high school district’s resolution passed with six board members in favor of the lawsuit. Three high school board members — from District 24 — abstained from the vote.

Officials concerned by ‘lack of information’

The lawsuit comes as other elementary school districts in Valley Stream are lobbying county legislators to restore the Green Acres Mall to the tax rolls.

Nassau County Legislator Carrie Solages (D-Elmont) said he was disappointed at the result of Monday’s meeting of the Legislature.

On Monday, school officials and Board of Education members attended a meeting of the Nassau County Legislature to seek more data.

“There is no reason why the county cannot pursue a correction of errors proceedings which would put the mall back on the tax roll,” Solages said in an email to the Herald. “It is unfortunate that the Republican majority and the Republican county executive are not acting to protect tax payers and in essence they are protecting the mall. They are allowing the mall not to pay any taxes or PILOT payments. If this is not resolved by August, the true victims will be our children because there will be a huge hole in the school district budget that the rest of the taxpayers will have to fill.”

District 30 Superintendent Nicholas Stirling echoed Solages’s statement.
“This lack of information is extremely concerning,” Stirling said in a statement. “Our district must set its tax levy for the 2017-18 school year by August 15. Without knowing the taxable status of the mall, the district will be forced to calculate the tax levy without accounting for the mall’s share. This could potentially shift $14 million to the residents of our community, a burden I know they cannot bear.”

The District 13 Board of Education and Superintendent Constance Evelyn recently sent a letter to residents outlining their efforts to restore the mall to the tax rolls, including holding public hearings and meeting with representatives.

“The long-term nature of our distressed economy has forced many difficult decisions to be made at both the national and local levels,” the letter stated. “However, where it starts does not have to be where it ends. As leaders, we are not charged to wage battles over a shared tax base that has been impaled by shrinking resources. More appropriately, we should be seeking righteous solutions for our community members, of which the most precious are the children.”