February 04, 2000
Legal Briefs
The Garden City law firm of Quadrino & Schwartz has won a tax dispute between its client, Barclay Townhouse and the Town of Hempstead.
Barclay Townhouse will no longer have to pay taxes on services it doesn't use, and the town must issue a refund of more than $75,000.
"Taxation without representation was an issue we thought was resolved a long time ago," joked Evan Schwartz, a founding partner at Quadrino & Schwartz. "Homeowners in the Barclay Townhouse development had read about similar communities that had fought on this issue and own. We were hired to eliminate an expense that was unnecessary and unfair."
In April 1986, the Town of Hempstead adopted a zoning change that required the newly built Barclay Townhouse Community to pay a private company to handle garbage pickup and for each unit to have an individual, in-ground trash container, rather than a dumpster used by multiple units. Barclay Townhouse never had refuse service from the town, but was charged for the service.
According to Schwartz, when this discrepancy was brought to the town's attention, it refused to stop charging the tax. Barclay was paying about $7,000 to have a private carting company take out the trash, and being charged an additional $12,000 every year by the Town of Hempstead for a service it didn't get and didn't need. In 1995, Barclay Townhouse lodged a formal protest, the town refused to stop collecting the tax and Barclay Townhouse sued.