Issue #39, December 22, 2006

OOPS, WE TYPED IT UP WRONG, VERY SORRY

By Dan Rattiner

Somebody made a mistake in Town Hall, and because of it, the taxpayers in Springs had to pay more taxes than they owe. The Town is apologizing and though they won’t be refunding any money, they want to let everybody know they are really sorry and the extra money they charged will be deducted from each taxpayers tax bill for next year.

Here’s how it happened. When the town clerk’s office figures out what taxes everybody in a particular district has to pay, they figure out their budget, add up all the expenses that go out, subtract all the monies that come in from other places, such as the State of New York or the Federal Government and then divide this final amount among all the taxpayers of the district according to the tax rate that they have to pay.

In this case, the town had figured a preliminary amount for all the districts, but then did a final figuring deducting for all the credits that came in for the school districts from the state. The Montauk School district gets one amount, the Amagansett district gets another amount, the Springs district gets still another amount.

A clerk, typing up these amounts into the proper columns, accidentally typed in the column for Springs, the amount intended for Montauk. Montauk’s rebate is less than the Springs rebate. So this clerk typed in $523,824 for Montauk and she typed in $523,824 for Springs.

The Supervisor, noting that this made a pretty big tax shortfall for Springs where they were expecting much more than $523,824, called a quick meeting of the townspeople and let them know that because they had received less for Springs than what they expected, they’d have to add approximately 1% of the taxes to their bills in order to balance the budget.

People grumbled a bit about this, but what could they do? They asked if the Town had called the State to ask about the shortfall and they learned that indeed the Town had, and the State said it was what it was. The state, incidentally, was looking at the larger sum and wondering why that was a problem. The Town was looking at the smaller amount, which was the amount for Montauk and wondering why it was so little. The State person said they would call back, but never did.

And so the charge was made and the money paid, and then the Supervisor realized he had raked in more money in the Springs district than he had bargained for. And when THAT was looked into, they found this big check from the State for Springs instead of the smaller amount they expected and when they looked into THAT, they found the clerical error.

So they’re really sorry.