On June 24, 2011, New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo passed a law establishing a tax levy limit on all local governments and most school districts. This law limits the amount that a school district can raise the tax levy by 2 percent. (If the rate of inflation is lower than 2 percent, that becomes the “tax cap,” but the rate of inflation is 3.4 percent this year.)

Due to certain exemptions, the Levittown School District can raise their tax levy by 2.51 percent for the 2012-13 school year. This doesn’t mean, however, that every homeowner’s tax bill will rise 2.51 percent. Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance Mark Flower explained this in-depth at the district’s first budget planning session on Feb. 15.

A district's tax levy is the amount of money it needs to raise from the homeowners of the district in order to finance its budget. The number is calculated by subtracting different revenues, such as state aid and money taken out of fund balances and reserves, from the total cost of the budget. This year's tax levy, according to a presentation made by Flower at the budget planning session, was $125,052,875. (The maximum amount it can be raised to for next year’s budget is $128,188,261, or a 2.51 percent increase.)

The tax levy helps to determine a tax rate. There are four classes of properties in Nassau County. Class 1, the residential portion, makes up approximately 89 percent of the tax bill, or $112,079,727 of the tax levy. To get the residential tax rate, the residential portion of the tax levy is divided by the total assessed value of all residential buildings in Levittown ($11,705,371). This leaves a number of 9.5751, or 957.51 per $100 of assessed value.

Each individual home also has an assessed, or taxable, value, which is .25 percent of the home’s actual worth. (Flower showed a sample tax bill to illustrate the point. The home on the bill was worth $399,200; the assessed value of that home was 998. You can find your home's assessed value at this link on the Nassau County website.) That individual assessed value is multiplied by the assessed value for the entire district (9.5751), resulting in the total that a homeowner has to pay in taxes. (That number could be reduced if residents qualify under the New York State School TAx Relief (STAR) program.)

In simpler terms, the tax levy will play a part in next year’s tax bill. But the value of all homes in the school district, as well as the value of a taxpayer’s individual home, also plays a part. If one or both of those factors change, it will impact taxes.

“Depending on how your house changes compared to all of the other houses in Levittown, your taxes could go up or down more than that 2 percent number,” Flower said. “The average home in Levittown was assessed at $860 in 2010. In 2011, it dropped to $813. So if your house did not drop proportionally from that $860 to that $813 number, your taxes would’ve gone much higher if it didn’t drop at that same ratio.”