If you see someone with a camera photographing your house sometime in April, it will probably be someone hired to help Nassau County in its reassessment project. Continuing its efforts to educate Manhasset's residents, the Community Liaison Committee (CLC) last week played host to Ben L. Nadola, public information for Cole, Layer, Trumble, the company that is charged with the reassessment of Nassau County. Mr. Nadola began his presentation by reassuring those present that the many exemptions that are in place, such as the STAR program, veterans' benefits and home improvement phase-ins, will remain in place. Residents will not have to reapply for them after reassessment.

He then gave the background that has led to the reassessment program. The function of the board of assessors and of Charles O'Shea, its chairman, is to publish listings of properties with improvements, lot number, owner, structure and value. Nassau set its land values according to 1938 construction costs and there has been no residential reassessment since that year. "The board of assessors publishes the roll," Mr. Nadola said, "and provides it to other districts." The other districts include school, town, village, library and police. It is widely known that the school tax is the largest part of the tax bill.

"The $64,000 question everyone wants the answer to," Mr. Nadola said," is 'what impact will reassessment have on my taxes in 2003 when it is completed?' The answer is, I don't know." He explained that what brought Nassau County to the decision to reassess was a lawsuit brought in 1997, challenging the inequality of assessment and charging racial prejudice. The basis of the suit is that although two houses, say one in Manhasset and one in Freeport, cost the same to build in 1938, the neighborhoods have changed resulting in houses having very different values in 1997. As a result, thousands of homeowners and owners of commercial property have successfully disputed their assessments and the county has had to reimburse them. This has caused the county to incur significant debt. When Mr. O'Shea was elected chairman of the board of assessors he formed a commission to investigate these charges. The commission found there was a disparity problem and the only satisfactory remedy would be reassessment, using current market values.

Mr. O'Shea's office issued RFPs (requests for proposal) to 45 companies in the business of reassessment. Only two responded and Cole Layer Trumble was selected for the job. The Nassau County Legislature approved the selection with bipartisan support. The market evaluation of all residential properties will be completed by 2003. Employees of Cole Layer Trumble will photograph more than 415,000 properties. The photos, taken from curbside, will be linked, through a computerized database, to detailed descriptions of each property. This information will be the foundation upon which market value appraisals and new assessments will be based. Manhasset imaging will begin the week of April 30. The Nassau County 6th Police Precinct will have descriptions of the employees who will be taking the pictures as well as a record of license plates of their cars. A second round of pictures will be taken in mid-July to verify the earlier information. "There will be no knocking on doors unless the assessor has written to the homeowner and received permission," Mr. Nadola said. Step three will be what is called "modeling," judging current market value by finding five similar properties that have been sold recently. There will be a third visit in the summer of 2002 and in the fall of 2002 the homeowner will receive a value estimate. In December of 2002 the homeowner will receive a new assessment announcement. The tax bill that uses this assessment will arrive in October of 2003. It will still be possible for homeowners to bring grievance cases if they wish to dispute the new assessment. Mr. Nadola said that there may be some successful challenges "but nothing like now."

The cost to the county of reassessment is $23 million, money that is expected to be well spent if it saves the annual costs of successful grievance suits.