The grievance shift: what Nassau's frozen roll costs the neighbors who don't file

Key takeaways

Everyone, filer or not, pays a school tax rate 6.21% higher than it would be with no grievances. Filers offset it with their own cut; the estimated $83.9 million a year falls on the roughly 40% who didn't file.
59.4% of Nassau homes grieved the 2026/27 roll, and 92.5% of filers won a cut.
To fully offset the higher rate, a filer's cut has to be at least uplift ÷ (1 + uplift): 5.84% countywide, 7.11% in Wantagh.
In Wantagh the rate is 7.66% higher: about $888 a year on a home assessed at 540, school and library taxes.
Rockville Centre is hit hardest, with school rates 9.49% higher.
Contingency fees eat the savings: filing yourself is free and leaves you $430 ahead; a 50% firm keeps $659 and leaves you $229 behind.
The roll has been frozen under both parties: Mangano from 2011, Curran's 2022/23 and 2023/24 rolls, and Blakeman ever since.

Filer vs. non-filer: same house, same higher rate

Everyone pays the higher rate. What differs is the offset. Here is one Wantagh house, assessed at 540, under three owners. All three see the same 7.66% higher school and library rate. Only the filers get a cut to set against it.

Doesn't file

No offset

School + library rate+7.66%

Their cutNone

2026/27 school + library tax$12,481

+$888

more than if nobody grieved

Files, small cut

25th-percentile cut

School + library rate+7.66%

Their cut38 pts (7.0%)

2026/27 school + library tax$11,603

+$9

about even

Files, typical cut

Average cut (median 54 pts)

School + library rate+7.66%

Their cut57 pts (10.6%)

2026/27 school + library tax$11,164

−$430

less than if nobody grieved

Break-even: a cut has to be at least 7.11% (about 38 points on this house) just to cancel Wantagh's 7.66% higher rate. The formula is uplift ÷ (1 + uplift). Countywide it is 5.84% (from the 6.21% county figure); the highest is Rockville Centre at 8.66%.

School and library taxes, 2026/27, at $2,311.36 per $100 of assessed value (school $2,215.94, library $95.42), before STAR. "If nobody grieved" means the same levy spread over the uncut roll: the rate would be 7.66% lower, and this house would pay about $11,594. The small cut is the 25th percentile among Wantagh filers who won a cut (7.06%), applied to this house. The typical cut is filers' average of 56.7 points, rounded to 57; at the median, 54 points, the owner comes out $360 ahead. Filing yourself saves the full cut against not filing: $878 with the small cut and $1,317 with the typical cut.

Break-even cut, every district (2026/27)

Amityville2.93%
Baldwin4.06%
Bellmore5.58%
Bethpage5.87%
Carle Place6.35%
Cold Spring Harbor5.78%
East Meadow5.49%
East Rockaway6.36%
East Williston6.76%
Elmont3.28%
Farmingdale5.04%
Floral Park-Bellerose7.33%
Franklin Square6.25%
Freeport2.69%
Garden City6.27%
Glen Cove3.74%
Great Neck7.85%
Hempstead1.60%
Herricks7.36%
Hewlett-Woodmere5.88%
Hicksville4.90%
Island Park4.81%
Island Trees4.66%
Jericho7.29%
Lawrence4.17%
Levittown5.08%
Locust Valley5.47%
Long Beach4.59%
Lynbrook7.28%
Malverne4.60%
Manhasset6.88%
Massapequa6.38%
Merrick6.65%
Mineola6.57%
New Hyde Park-Garden City Park7.75%
North Bellmore5.79%
North Merrick6.09%
North Shore5.38%
Oceanside6.66%
Oyster Bay-East Norwich6.56%
Plainedge6.43%
Plainview-Old Bethpage6.61%
Port Washington6.72%
Rockville Centre8.66%
Roosevelt0.80%
Roslyn5.76%
Seaford6.62%
Syosset6.70%
Uniondale3.12%
Valley Stream 134.83%
Valley Stream 243.83%
Valley Stream 303.29%
Wantagh7.11%
West Hempstead5.73%
Westbury2.69%

Break-even = uplift ÷ (1 + uplift), where uplift is the Class 1 assessed value filers removed divided by the final Class 1 roll.

59.4% filed. Everyone else paid.

With Nassau's assessment roll kept frozen, 59.4% of homeowners grieved the 2026/27 roll, and their cuts left home school tax rates about 6.21% higher than they would otherwise be, moving an estimated $83.9 million a year onto the neighbors who didn't file.

59.4%

Homes that grieved

230,206 of 387,383 Class 1 parcels

92.5%

Filers who got a cut

212,825 of 230,122 ARC applications

14.66M

Assessed value removed

From homes, 2026/27 roll

$83.9M

Shifted onto non-filers

School taxes, 54 districts, before STAR (estimate)

Same levy, smaller base, higher rate

The school district's levy is the total it must raise. The rate is whatever it takes to raise it.

Roll stays frozenAssessments drift away from today's market values

↓

Most homeowners grieve59.4% filed; 92.5% of filers won a cut

↓

Total assessed value shrinks14.66M AV removed from homes in 2026/27

↓

Levy stays the sameSchools still need the same dollars

↓

Tax rate risesSame levy ÷ smaller base

↓

Non-filers pay moreTheir AV didn't drop, but their rate went up

↓

Next roll restores the cutCut homes came back about +9% the next January

↻ repeat every year

Tax rate =Levy (dollars the district must raise)Total taxable assessed value

Nassau's own FAQ describes it this way: each district's tax revenue is divided by the assessed value of all property in the district to set the rate. [1] The extreme case shows the logic. Using Jericho's 2026/27 numbers, if every home but one grieves and wins the average 9.1% cut, nobody saves anything, except relative to the one home that didn't file.

$17,391

Nobody grieves

$17,391

Everyone grieves

$19,131

The lone non-filer

+$1,740

Extra for the one home that didn't file

Jericho illustration, typical home (AV 933.5), school tax

Saved if everyone files

The rate rises just enough to offset the cuts

Your district's hit

2026/27 roll, Class 1 school tax, before STAR and other exemptions. Glen Cove's school tax is billed by the city, so it has no dollar figure.

9.49%

Highest: Rockville Centre

74.5% filed; $1,380 per typical non-filer

6.15%

Median district

County-weighted: 6.21%

0.80%

Lowest: Roosevelt

23.5% filed; $46 per typical non-filer

Rate uplift is how much higher a district's home school rate is than it would be if the tentative values had stood. The dollar figure is what a typical non-filing one-family home pays extra because of its neighbors' cuts. The more a district files, the bigger the shift:

Wantagh, dollar by dollar

+7.66%

Rate uplift, levy flat

231,118 ÷ 3,018,105 final AV

$888

Extra on a 540 home

School and library taxes, a year

69.9%

Homes that grieved

4,075 of 5,826; 3,894 got a cut

Assessed value removed: 231,118 of 3,255,172 (7.10% of the tentative roll)
Typical cut per filer: Mean 56.7 AV points, median 54 (median 9.7%)
School + library rate: $2,311.36 per $100 AV (school $2,215.94, library $95.42)
Typical non-filer extra: $857 a year, school tax, home assessed at 544

Take a Wantagh home assessed at 540 that wins a 57-point cut, worth $1,317 a year. Here's who keeps it under each way of filing:

You keepFirm's fee

File yourself$1,317 kept

Flat-fee firm$1,167 kept

25% contingency$988 kept

50% contingency$659 kept

And here's where each option leaves you, against not filing and against a world where nobody grieved:

Saved vs. not filingBetter off than if nobody grievedWorse off

Option	Gross saving	Fee	Saved vs. not filing	Vs. nobody grieving
Don't file	$0	$0	$0	-$888
File yourself	$1,317	$0	$1,317	+$430
Flat-fee firm	$1,317	$150	$1,167	+$280
25% contingency	$1,317	$329	$988	+$100
50% contingency	$1,317	$659	$659	-$229

School and library taxes only, where the 7.66% applies directly; county, town and special-district taxes are left out of both sides. The $888 is what grievances add to a 540 home at 7.66%: 540 × $23.11 × 0.0766 ÷ 1.0766. The $150 flat fee is the example fee from Jeff Gold's post; contingency fees are taken as a share of the first-year gross saving. All figures are estimates before STAR.

A shift that keeps growing

Parcels with an ARC, small-claims or court grievance on each roll, all property classes. The county's appeal records only cover parcels on today's roll, so early years run low. 2027/28 cases are mostly still pending.

$46.0M → $83.9M

Shifted onto non-filers

Homes, 2023/24 to 2026/27 rolls

3.51% → 6.21%

Rate uplift

Same rolls

Shifted onto non-filers

$53.0M

22/23

$46.0M

23/24

$63.8M

24/25

$75.3M

25/26

$83.9M

26/27

Rate uplift

4.30%

22/23

3.51%

23/24

4.83%

24/25

5.55%

25/26

6.21%

26/27

Roll	Filed	Filers cut	AV removed	Uplift
2022/23	56.8%	79.8%	10.60M	4.30%
2023/24	56.1%	77.7%	8.46M	3.51%
2024/25	57.2%	87.1%	11.53M	4.83%
2025/26	57.6%	90.6%	13.17M	5.55%
2026/27	59.4%	92.5%	14.66M	6.21%

How we got here: 90 years in 13 dates

Numbers in brackets link to the source list at the bottom.

State lawMangano yearsCurran yearsBlakeman yearsFindings

1936

The county is put in charge of assessing all property

The state-enacted Nassau County Charter makes it the assessor's duty to assess all property in the county (§ 602).

[2]

1948

County Guaranty

State law makes the county, not school districts or towns, liable for refunds from erroneous assessments.

[3]

Jan 2010

Refund debt

County Executive Ed Mangano says assessment errors created $1.2 billion in debt, with another $100 million to be spent on past mistakes.

[4]

2011

Mangano freezes assessments

He moves to stop borrowing for about $100 million a year in refunds and begins settling grievances before bills go out.

[5] [6]

2017

Newsday finds a $1.7 billion shift

Over seven years, taxes shifted from the 61% who won appeals to the 39% who didn't; typical non-appealers' bills rose $2,748 vs $466 for appealers.

[7] [8]

2018-19

Curran reassesses every property

After an eight-year freeze, during which home prices rose 34% while assessments stayed put, new values are set for the 2020/21 roll. Curran testifies the county lost a third of its home assessed value to grievances during the freeze.

[9] [11]

Mar 2020

Five-year phase-in

The County Legislature passes the Reassessment Phase-In Act, spreading each change over five years, fully in place by 2024/25.

[10]

Dec 2020

Curran freezes the 2022/23 roll

Valuation updates are paused, citing the pandemic housing market.

[11]

Jan 2022

2023/24 roll frozen; Blakeman takes office

Curran freezes a second roll before leaving. Comptroller Elaine Phillips begins an audit of the reassessment in February.

[10] [11]

2023 on

Blakeman keeps the freeze

He says fixing the rolls needs time after the audit and the phase-in. Democratic county legislators say an extended freeze leaves grieving as owners' only protection.

[12]

May 2025

About 227,000 homeowners filed

Newsday reports about 80% of filers won settlements in the prior year.

[13]

Jan 2026

Another roll, and a state audit

The 2027/28 tentative roll comes out Jan. 2. The state-appointed NIFA announces an audit of the Department of Assessment, saying the rolls have been frozen for years; Blakeman says voters rejected a full reassessment.

[15] [16]

Apr 2026

2026/27 final roll

92.5% of home ARC filers got a cut; 14.66 million AV removed; school bills follow in October 2026. (Rae Arora's analysis)

[14]

Your questions, answered

Tap a question to open the answer.

Doesn't everyone pay the higher rate?

Yes, and that's how the shift works. Everyone in a school district pays the same rate, so filers and non-filers alike see a school rate 6.21% higher countywide (7.66% in Wantagh) than it would be if nobody grieved. The difference is the offset: a filer's own cut lowers the assessment that rate is applied to, which cancels some or all of the increase. A non-filer gets no offset and feels the full effect. On a Wantagh home assessed at 540 (school and library taxes), the owner who doesn't file pays about $888 more than in a world with no grievances; an owner with a 38-point cut comes out about even (+$9); an owner with the average 57-point cut comes out $430 ahead. The break-even cut is uplift ÷ (1 + uplift): 7.11% in Wantagh, 5.84% countywide. What filers save in total is what non-filers pay in total, because the levy doesn't change: an estimated $83.9 million a year in school taxes, falling on the roughly 40% who didn't file.

Isn't it the school budgets and spending, not assessments?

Both matter, but they answer different questions. Spending sets the size of the pie: the school levy. The county's assessment roll decides who pays which slice. In Wantagh this year, the home school rate rose 5.48%; levy growth was the biggest piece (3.42 points), and the change in grievance cuts added 1.36 points. Cutting school spending would shrink everyone's bill; it would not stop the slice from sliding off grievers and onto non-grievers.

County executives don't control school taxes, right?

They don't set school budgets. But the county sets the assessed value of every home in every school district, and the school levy is spread across those values. The Department of Assessment answers to the county executive, and the decision to keep the roll frozen is the county's. The county's own levy has been held near $755.3 million since 2022, and its part of the shift is small, about $5.8 million a year onto non-filers on the 2025/26 roll, against $75.3 million in school taxes.

The total levy is the same either way. So where's the harm?

That's exactly the harm. Grievances don't raise or lower the total; they move it. Every dollar a griever saves is a dollar paid by someone else in the same district, mostly by the people who didn't file. In 2026/27 that came to an estimated $83.9 million in school taxes.

Does 7.66% mean Wantagh taxes went up 7.66% from last year?

No. The 7.66% is a level: how much higher this year's rate is than it would be if no one's assessment had been cut. A rate increase is also not the same as a bill increase. Because last year's cuts were also baked in, the year-over-year push from grievances was the change in that level, 1.36 points in Wantagh. The non-filer's extra cost is real every year: about $857 for a typical Wantagh home in 2026/27, up from $516 on the 2022/23 roll.

My taxes went up after I grieved. How?

Two reasons. A griever still pays the higher rate, because everyone in the district pays the same rate. And a cut lasts one roll: Wantagh homes cut an average 8.67% on the 2025/26 roll came back up 8.93% on the next January's tentative roll. Skip a year and your assessment goes back up.

Isn't the average cut skewed by a few big reductions?

Not much in Wantagh. Filers' mean cut was 56.7 assessment points and the median was 54, a median cut of 9.7%. Countywide, the median home that won a cut got 54 points (9.14%), while the mean was about 69 points, pulled up by pricier homes. The 7.66% uses the actual total removed, not an average.

This started long before Blakeman. Isn't everyone to blame?

The history spans both parties. Mangano froze the roll in 2011 after years of refund debt; Newsday later found $1.7 billion shifted to non-appealers. Curran reassessed every home, and her five-year phase-in raised many homes' taxable value a step each year through 2024/25, and she froze the 2022/23 and 2023/24 rolls. Blakeman has kept the roll frozen since. The point here is the effect of a freeze, whoever keeps it: the longer it lasts, the more people grieve and the more non-filers pay.

Isn't this Hochul's problem, or Cuomo's 2% cap?

The state's tax cap limits how fast a levy can grow, to the lower of 2% or inflation, with exceptions. That limits the size of the pie, not how it's sliced. Assessment is a county job under the county charter, which a state appeals court confirmed in 2018. The state does play a part: it wrote the charter and the 1948 refund guaranty, and its fiscal board, NIFA, is now auditing the assessment department.

Why can't we know our bill in advance, like a millage rate?

New York is levy-driven: each board sets the dollars it needs, and the rate falls out as levy ÷ assessed value. Some places are rate-driven, setting the rate first; the assessors' professional body says that's more predictable but less transparent, and recommends the levy-driven model. In Nassau the final roll comes out April 1, school budgets and levies are voted in May, and bills arrive in October, so the rate can't be fixed until the grievance results are in.

Isn't a freeze good because it keeps taxes stable? If they fix it, do we all save?

A freeze doesn't lower the total: Nassau's own FAQ says districts raise rates as needed to collect what they need. The state tax department warns that capping assessments just redistributes the burden toward homes whose value rises more slowly. A fixed roll wouldn't shrink the levy either, so most people wouldn't save. It would line each home's share up with its value, make bills steadier, and take away the need to file every year just to stand still.

Should I still grieve?

Yes. As long as the system works like this, not filing means paying for your neighbors' cuts. Filing with the county's Assessment Review Commission is free if you do it yourself. In the Wantagh example, filing yourself saves $1,317 compared with not filing, and leaves you $430 ahead of a world where nobody grieved. A 50% contingency firm keeps $659 of that, which leaves you $229 behind. Because cuts are reversed the next year, you'd pay that fee again every year.

Method and sources

The bottom line. The numbers show the size of the shift, not that any grievance was wrong. Analysis by Rae Arora.

Data: every Nassau tentative and final assessment roll from 2022/23 to 2026/27, joined to each parcel's appeal history on the county's Land Records Viewer (about 6.46 million appeal records).
A grievance means an ARC application, small-claims (SCAR) petition or court writ on that year's roll. AV removed is tentative minus final value for filers; about 0.25% of rows were dropped for data errors.
Rate uplift is AV removed ÷ final Class 1 AV, with each district's levy and Class 1 share held fixed. Class shares aren't published, so that part is an assumption.
School rates are from each district's tax tab on the Land Records Viewer, excluding library unless stated. Levies are from the State Comptroller and NYSED Property Tax Report Cards.
Dollar figures are estimates before STAR and other exemptions. Reductions won after the final roll (most small-claims and court cases) aren't counted, so the shift is understated.
Data sources: Nassau County assessment rolls (nassaucountyny.gov/5831) and Land Records Viewer (lrv.nassaucountyny.gov); NYSED Property Tax Report Cards; NYS Comptroller levy tables. Nassau's 2026 NIFA budget book gives the county levy figure.

Assessment Review Commission FAQ · nassaucountyny.gov
Boening v Nassau County Dept. of Assessment (County Charter § 602) · nycourts.gov · Jan 2018
Matter of Baldwin UFSD v County of Nassau (1948 County Guaranty) · nycourts.gov · 2013
Dealing With a Tax Burden · New York Times · Jan 2010
Dems Criticize Mangano's Assessment Reform · Long Island Press · Feb 2011
Mangano eyes more Nassau assessment reforms · Long Island Business News · Oct 2011
Nassau Tax Shift · Newsday · 2017
How tax bills changed with and without appeals · Newsday
Testimony of County Executive Laura Curran · NYS Assembly · Feb 11, 2019
Phillips announces audit of tax reassessment · Herald · 2022
Nassau County freezes assessments after home-price surge · The Real Deal · Jan 2022
Nassau County tax assessments remain frozen · Herald
Nearly 80% of Nassau homeowners who filed tax grievance succeed · Newsday · May 2025
Nassau County Assessment Review Dates · nassaucountyny.gov
Nassau County publishes 2027/28 tentative roll · Farrell Fritz · Jan 2026
Fiscal watchdog announces audit of Nassau Assessment Dept. · Long Island Press · Jan 2026
Property tax myths and misunderstandings · NYS Dept. of Taxation and Finance
Standard on Property Tax Policy (levy- vs rate-driven) · IAAO · 2020
What is the Real Property Tax Cap? · NYS Comptroller
2026 NIFA Approved Budget Summary Book · nassaucountyny.gov
NYSED Property Tax Report Cards · nysed.gov