School district may not charge library for tax certiorari refund

By John Tully
Assistant Counsel

Following a 10-year series of tax certiorari proceedings, a town and a school district agreed to pay a substantial refund to the property owner of a private golf club. The settlement agreement also provided that the school district would not have to pay interest on that portion of the refund it owed to the property owner if it paid the refund in two installments as specified in the agreement. To meet this obligation, the school district decided to withhold the payment of taxes to a free association library previously approved by the district’s voters for library purposes. The amount of money withheld was more than $10,000. 

The library, which had not been involved in the tax certiorari proceedings and had not been advised of or consulted regarding the settlement, challenged the district’s action before the commissioner of education. The issue in Appeal of the Croton Free Library was whether the library had any responsibility to contribute toward the payment of the tax refund agreed to in the agreement reached to settle the tax certiorari proceedings.

Relying on prior opinions issued by the Office of the State Comptroller and various sections of the state’s Real Property Tax Law and Education Law, the commissioner ruled that “the library was not required to refund taxes attributable to library purposes, and that [the school district] lack[ed] authority to charge such refund to the library.”

In those prior decisions, the state comptroller had determined that a school district had no authority to recover from a school district public library “an amount equal to the proportionate reduction of taxes levied for library purposes.”

The commissioner found no basis for treating a free association library any different from a school district public library. A school district public library is established by a school district, while a free association public library is formed by a group of private individuals.

The Real Property Tax Law requires school districts levying a tax for library purposes to state such amount separately on the school tax bill, and the Education Law requires that a school district pay over to the treasurer of any type of library the money it receives from taxes or other public sources. Both laws treat school district public libraries, free association libraries and others, equally.