Joseph DeLalla has been checking his mailbox for about three months to see if he’s gotten mail from the North Rockland school district.

He said he’s waiting for a $500 school tax refund.

DeLalla is one of the hundreds of condominium owners who have been waiting for refunds since late October.

Haverstraw Town Assessor David Adams said his office had found discrepancies in its property database after several condominium owners on Thiells-Mount Ivy Road questioned why assessments for similar units varied.

Last year, for the first time since 1967, the town updated its property assessments. But when condominium owners received their 2006-07 school tax bills in early September, they noticed that something was not right.

Adams held multiple meetings with condominium leaders as he investigated the issue. He said he found inaccurate information was mixed in the database used to assess the Town ‘N’ Country, Cedar Ridge, Pomona Park and Sumerset condominiums.

Once he identified the problems and corrected them, he notified about 700 condo owners about changes to their assessments.

Those who paid school taxes based on incorrect assessments had to file refund applications in late October.

Adams said the amount of school tax refunds varied, ranging from $7 to $1,100. Total amount of refunds would be between $300,000 and $400,000, he said.

DeLalla said his condominium’s assessment was reduced by 18 percent, or from about $280,000 to $230,000. Because he paid a little less than $3,000 in his school tax for 2006-07, he estimated his refund would be about $500, he said.

“Some of the condominium owners received their refunds immediately, within a couple of weeks,” DeLalla said. “And I’m waiting and waiting and waiting.”

Adams said once a unit owner filled out a refund application, the form was processed at his office, forwarded to the county’s Real Property Tax Office for its approval, and then sent to the school district.

Superintendent of Schools Brian Monahan said last week that the district received about 20 applications for refunds in a usual year, but this year it had about 630.

“We’ve been working on them since November,” Monahan said. “They take a great deal of time to process.”

In two months, the district had processed a little less than a half of the refund applications it received, or about 300, so people could assume it would take at least two more months to process all of them, Monahan said.

“Checks are going out each week. We have people working overtime to get it done,” Monahan said. “We didn’t make the mistake, but we need to make sure that they are correct when they go out because if you send somebody too much, they’re probably not going to call you up.”

DeLalla said the district should hurry up because some people need the money.

“I’m not in poverty, but there are some senior citizens in our condominiums who could use the money immediately,” DeLalla said. “If we pay our taxes late, we’d get hit with late charges.”

Source: www.thejournalnews.com

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 7:39 pm and is filed under Condo, Real Estate. Tags: Condo Database Property . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.