At the March 14 Glen Cove City Council meeting, a resolution authorizing the mayor to enter into a refund and reconciliation agreement between the County of Nassau and the City of Glen Cove and the Glen Cove City School District was passed.
As previously reported by the Glen Cove Oyster Bay Record Pilot, the City of Glen Cove Mayor Pam Panzenbeck announced at the Oct. 25 2022 City Council meeting that the city, in early 2023, will be receiving approximately $800,000 from Nassau County in reimbursement for overpaid Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) payments.
“As you may or may not recall, the Office of the State Comptroller audited the City of Glen Cove’s Industrial Development Agency (IDA) more than a year ago and issued their report in July of 2021,” Mayor Panzenbeck said. “As part of that report, PILOT payments were not allocated correctly among affected taxing jurisdictions, namely the city, county and school district. As a result of the state’s audit using a sample period from January 2017 to September of 2019, Nassau County was overpaid to the detriment of the city and the school district. The city decided to extrapolate the sample to all active PILOT agreements, since the allocations were never adjusted since the inception of each agreement included in the audit.”
Panzenbeck further announced that the allocations were correctly recalculated by year dating back to 2010, finding that the county was overpaid $800,000 that should have been paid to the city. Since that discovery last spring, the city has been in conversations with the county to be reimbursed for these payments. The $800,000 will be used in the budget; $565,000 of it being used to offset the General Fund Operating Expenses. That is how the City of Glen Cove was able to pass a budget without a tax increase.
The Glen Cove City School District should also receive $800,000.
“I just want to say that I’m really thrilled that we are getting the reimbursement of the money that was erroneously paid to the county back in the city coffers,” said Councilwoman Marsha Silverman during the March 14 City Council meeting. “It’s long overdue. It’s been about 10, 11 years and I’m just thankful that it’s finally coming in.”
Councilwoman Silverman was one of two council members that voted against the budget last year, calling the reliance on this one-shot revenue “overly optimistic.” Councilwoman Danielle Fugazy-Scagliola had voted against the budget for similar reasons.
“When I voted on our budget back in October, this money was money that was due to the city for 10 years, and it’s a one time revenue and it should have gone to one-time expenses and really gone against city deficit over the last 10 years,” Councilwoman Silverman said. “I know that a lot of this is going towards this year’s operating budget. I’m still concerned about that. But I’m glad it’s finally going into the city.”
Councilwomen Fugazy-Scagliola and Silverman both thanked the mayor for her efforts in getting the city what it is owed.
