SCHOOLS

School board pledges Aug. vote on vets’ tax breaks

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The Merrick Board of Education will vote in three months whether to grant community veterans school tax breaks, board members told a group of veterans, including leaders of Merrick’s American Legion Post 1282, at the board’s May 13 meeting.

This was the third consecutive Merrick school board meeting at which a contingent of local veterans — almost all of whom wore veterans’ hats and insignia — attended and voiced their displeasure that the board has not already passed the tax breaks.

“Everyone in the community should share in the cost?” asked Post 1282 Commander Kenneth Braun Sr., speaking rhetorically. “Veterans shared. They gave their lives for freedom … Veterans gave everything for this community.”

Veterans living in New York have for years been eligible for state, county, town and village tax exemptions. Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation last Dec. 18 giving school boards the option to offer exemptions as well. These exemptions reduce the assessed value of veterans’ homes, lowering their school taxes. There are three categories of exemptions: wartime veteran in a non-combat zone, wartime veteran in a combat zone and wartime veteran in a combat zone with disability. The exemptions impose some cost to non-veteran households, which must make up the difference in districts’ property-tax levies.

Thirty-eight of Nassau County’s 54 school districts approved veterans’ tax exemptions this year, according to Brian Nevin, a county spokesman.

Despite the affirmative votes of 38 Nassau school districts, no Nassau veterans will see the exemptions apply to their 2014-15 school taxes. An April 1 letter signed by Nassau Acting Assessor James Davis, which the county’s Department of Assessment emailed to school district officials around the county, first informed them that there was a Jan. 2 deadline for approving veterans tax exemptions — a deadline that no district met. The exemptions will now take effect in 2015-16 in those districts that passed them.

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