Tax bill complaints aired at 2026 budget hearing

Riverhead Town officials fielded residents’ questions and complaints about rising property taxes during a hearing Thursday afternoon on the Town Board’s preliminary budget for 2026. 

Many of those who took the podium focused on the town piercing the 2% cap on the property tax levy increase again this year, but the substance of their actual complaints had to do with the bottom line impact on their tax bills in the coming year. The tax levy is only part of that picture. 

The tax levy is the total amount of money each taxing agency — like the town, county, or school district — needs to raise from property owners to fund its budget. Once that total is set, it’s divided among all property owners based on their assessed values. The assessor uses this to figure out the tax rate, which shows how much tax is charged for every $1,000 of assessed value. 

An individual property’s share of the levy is then calculated by multiplying its assessed value by that rate. 

In short, the levy decides how much must be collected, the tax rate spreads it out, and the assessment determines the property’s share.

MORE COVERAGE: Riverhead’s 2026 tentative budget calls for town wide tax rate increase of 6.74%

The preliminary budget calls for a 7.74% increase in the townwide tax levy,  resulting in a townwide tax rate of  $71.549 per $1,000 of assessed value — up from $67.031 per $1,000. That’s an increase of $4.518 per $1,000 of assessed value.

Example of the homeowner impact for a home with a market value of $600,000:

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It’s important to note that in Riverhead Town, the assessed value is roughly 8% of market value.

It’s also important to note that the town tax is only one portion of a property tax bill. For the 2025 tax year, town taxes are about 33% of the total property tax bill. Riverhead Central School District taxes are about 54% of the total property tax bill. The remaining portion of the tax bill goes to special district taxes, such as the water, garbage and ambulance districts, and other taxing agency taxes, like the fire district and the county tax.

MORE COVERAGE: Riverhead to hold hearing to pierce tax cap and adopt 2026 budget Thursday; questions about budget hearing notice go unanswered

Residents at Thursday’s budget hearing gave voice to the pain they’re feeling overall. 

Deborah Freitag of South Jamesport said she moved to Riverhead Town in 2021. “My property taxes have gone up from $10,000 to $18,000 in the last four years,” she said. “It’s killing us. I mean, it’s really killing us,” she said. “We moved out here from New Jersey, and the life that I thought we would have is like being really impacted by the craziness of the tax increases. So it would be 23% with this proposed tax increase,” Freitag said.

Riverhead resident Cindy Clifford put the tax increase in the larger context of the current economy. “We’re facing rising costs on food, utilities, insurance, pretty much everything. There’s no passing those increases on,” Clifford said.

“For some, it’s only an aggravation of having to pay more, but for families living paycheck to paycheck, seniors on a fixed income, anyone struggling as every dollar coming in is already accounted for, there’s only reconfiguring the budget, cutting out surplus spending, turning the heat down a couple more degrees, looking at where else you can cut so you can still make what you have work,” Clifford said. “That doesn’t seem fair, and it doesn’t seem right.” 

She said the town should look more closely at how to configure its spending rather than “leaning on residents to make up the difference” when the cost of government increases. 

“If you’ve ever struggled financially, I would ask you to remember how stressful and difficult it is, and if you never have, then try to imagine what it would be like,” Clifford said.

Claudette Bianco of Baiting Hollow had similar complaints about rising tax bills and also questioned the amount being held in the town’s fund balance, which she said should have been used to offset a tax increase.

“I know that some fund balance is needed, but this is excessive,” Bianco said. “Ignoring the taxpayers is disrespectful and costly. As evidence, I submit the results of Tuesday’s election. People are angry and fed up,” she said. 

Supervisor Tim Hubbard is trailing challenger Jerry Halpin by 21 votes with absentee ballots that arrived on and after Election Day yet to be counted and, though the two incumbents won re-election,  the spread in votes among the four candidates for two council seats was narrower this year than in the past six town election cycles.

Hubbard and town council members defended the proposed budget, citing the increased costs of a beefed up town police force, now staffed with 100 officers, and contractual obligations for salary, retirement and health insurance that officials say are beyond their control.

Board members all endorsed the benefits of the town having its own police force, rather than relying on the county police department. 

Council Member Denise Merrifield stressed that it’s important for the town to pay its workforce “somewhat competitive salaries” or town employees will move on to jobs in other municipalities. 

One resident spoke out in support of the budget. Mike Foley of Reeves Park said there’s “a price to be paid in living in a beautiful area like ours.” Many development plans are “knocked down by the citizenry because we didn’t want that kind of development, having developers put things where they don’t belong in the opinions of the citizenry of this town,” he said.

“So I think we have to understand that smart development within the footprint delays revenue being brought into the town, but it’s what we want, so we have to understand that when it happens,” Foley said.

Future development of EPCAL, the town-owned former Grumman facility in Calverton, is the key to Riverhead’s solvency, Foley said. “We have 1,000 acres there, 600 or 700 acres that we’re hoping to develop into revenue-producing, environment-friendly, beneficial lands that, if we do this the right way, we’re going to raise enough money that we’ll never have to pierce the tax cap again,” Foley said.

Foley, who is a member of a town committee tasked with looking at prospective uses of the site – which remains tied up in litigation over a contract of sale the town attempted to cancel —expressed confidence that “once EPCAL comes on the books, we’ll never have to pierce that tax cap again. It’ll just never happen,” he said,

“I wholeheartedly support this budget. I think you did the best you could to keep the numbers down,” Foley said.

 The Town Board is required by state law to adopt its operating budget for the coming year by Nov. 20.

Editor’s note: This article was amended post-publication to add a table displaying key budget metrics and links to two previously published articles about the 2026 town budget.