We are an association library that receives about 75% of our operating budget from a tax levy approved by school district voters via a [New York State Education Law Section] 259 ballot proposition. In 2019 the school informed us that they had settled a case with a local resident about the assessed value of their property and how much was paid in taxes in 2018 and 2019. The assessment was changed, and the school owed him a refund. The district proposed to deduct the library’s amount of the refund from our 2019-20 tax levy. We were advised at the time that the district had no standing to do this, and that the law did not provide a recourse for refund of association library taxes.
Now we’ve received a demand for refund from the attorney of a different resident who had been disputing their assessment every year since 2018 (covering tax years 18/19, 19/20, 20/21, 21/22, 22/23 and 23/24). We’ve received no communication from the town or the school - just a letter from the attorney. It was settled in court, yet we had no idea it was happening. The town and the school district were represented and part of the negotiation, but not the library.
We have three questions:
1) Do we need to pay refunds to tax levies received in prior years?
2) If we’re not obligated to pay the refund, would the school district have to pay it on our behalf as the tax collector? and
3) Are we subject to settlements that we weren’t involved in, nor aware of?
Any other advice you have on proactively managing this issue going forward would be much appreciated!