Port Jefferson's Village Taxes Just Jumped 27.5%. Your School Tax Bill Tells a Different Story.

If you're comparing a Port Jefferson listing sheet to one in Miller Place or Mount Sinai, you probably looked at last year's property tax line and treated it like a fixed cost. It isn't, and this year proves why. Two different government budgets touch the same Port Jefferson address, and this spring they moved in almost opposite directions. The Village adopted a tax rate increase of 27.5% for the fiscal year that started June 1. The Port Jefferson School District, which taxes the same house, raised its levy by just 1.99%, safely under the state cap. Same property, same tax bill envelope, two very different stories inside it.

Understanding why those numbers diverged tells you something the median price on a portal listing never will: what's actually driving the cost of owning here, and whether the pressure behind it is finished or still building.

What Actually Happened to the Village Bill This Spring

The Village of Port Jefferson's tentative budget, released in March, proposed a 26.64% tax levy increase. Because of how the math works when a large piece of the tax base loses assessed value, that levy increase translated into a 41.16% tax rate increase. For the average residential property valued at $671,000, that would have meant roughly $648 more per year, or $54 a month, before a single cut was made.

Trustees didn't let that number stand. On April 7 and 8, the Board of Trustees ran marathon work sessions with department heads, the first time that kind of line-item collaboration happened in public. By the end, they'd identified $399,245 in possible expense reductions and another $260,000 in new revenue. The cuts were specific and, frankly, a little scrappy: trimming office supplies, passing parking credit card fees to the people using them instead of absorbing the cost, deferring a planned assistant DPW superintendent hire, and covering concert costs through ferry company sponsorship instead of the general fund. All five trustees tentatively agreed to eliminate their own salaries for the year, and Mayor Lauren Sheprow pledged to waive hers entirely if the board moved forward on hiring a village administrator.

That work brought the tax rate increase down to 27.5%. The board adopted the final budget on schedule, with the new fiscal year budget posted in mid-May.

Treasurer Stephen Gaffga was direct about where the pressure came from: roughly $970,000 of the increase traced back to non-discretionary costs like union contract obligations, insurance premiums, and retirement contributions. Layered on top of that, the Village has absorbed close to $1 million over the past nine years from a declining revenue source that has nothing to do with home values or local spending choices.

Deputy Mayor Xena Ugrinsky called it plainly during the budget sessions, saying "this year is going to be painful," and describing it as a "financial correction" tied to prior capital spending and a weakened fund balance. Mayor Sheprow put the longer arc in context, noting that the budget had stayed flat for years while the Village kept cutting expenses to offset a shrinking revenue source it knew was coming.

The Same Root Cause, a Completely Different Timeline

That shrinking revenue source is the Port Jefferson Power Station, and the mechanism behind it is worth understanding because it explains everything else in this post.

Back in 2018, after years of litigation, the Town of Brookhaven and the Village of Port Jefferson settled a tax assessment challenge brought by LIPA against the power plant. The agreement cut the plant's assessed value by 50% on a nine-year glide path, starting in the 2018-19 tax year and running through the 2026-2027 tax year. That's this fiscal year. The Village budget pain this spring isn't a surprise event. It's the scheduled final step of a nine-year plan that local officials signed onto back when the plant still generated far more of the tax base.

The Port Jefferson School District taxes the same power plant, and it's living through the identical glide path. But its 2026-27 budget of $50,531,381 carried only a 2.28% budget-to-budget increase and a 1.99% tax levy increase, staying under the state cap. Part of the difference comes down to timing and cushion. The District has been managing this decline gradually since 2019-20, drawing on reserve funds where needed and treating the loss as a known, budgeted line item spread across nearly a decade rather than something to absorb in a single painful year. The Village, by its own leadership's account, deferred harder choices for years and hit a wall this budget cycle when non-discretionary costs and the final leg of the glide path landed at the same time.

Here's the side-by-side:

Why This Isn't Necessarily Over

There's a second date worth knowing, separate from the glide path. The power supply agreement between LIPA and National Grid, the contract that determines whether the plant keeps producing power at all, is approaching expiration around 2027 to 2028. During the district's 2025-26 budget cycle, a school board presentation flagged the open question directly: if demand doesn't justify keeping the plant running once that agreement lapses, National Grid could shut it down, and the loss of revenue tied to the plant could go well beyond what's already been priced into this year's budgets.

That means the 27.5% Village increase and the 1.99% school levy increase aren't necessarily the end of this story. They're what happened in the final year of a plan everyone saw coming. What happens after the power supply agreement itself expires is a separate, less settled question, and it's one worth asking about directly if you're weighing a long-term hold in the Village.

What This Means If You're Comparing Addresses

A tax bill from an MLS sheet or a county record tells you what was paid last year. In most towns, that's a reasonable proxy for what you'll pay going forward. In Port Jefferson right now, it's closer to a photograph taken mid-transition. Two things worth checking before you anchor a decision to a prior year's number:

First, confirm whether the address sits inside the incorporated Village of Port Jefferson or outside it, in an area like Port Jefferson Station. Only properties within the Village boundary pay the Village tax layer described above. Everything else on a Port Jefferson mailing address still pays Town of Brookhaven, Suffolk County, and school taxes, but not this particular Village budget line.

Second, ask for the most recently adopted tax rate resolution rather than the last paid bill. Village tax bills go out by May 31 for a fiscal year that started June 1, so a bill mailed last December reflects the old rate, not the one now in effect.

None of this is a reason to avoid Port Jefferson. A Village that's willing to cut its own trustees' salaries and defer a department head hire before passing costs to homeowners is showing you how it makes decisions under pressure, and that's useful information in its own right. It's simply a reason to look at the actual current-year numbers instead of the ones printed on last year's paperwork.

A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Make an Offer

Does every Port Jefferson-area home pay this Village tax increase? No. Only properties inside the incorporated Village of Port Jefferson pay the Village tax layer. Homes in Port Jefferson Station and other nearby hamlets fall under Town of Brookhaven and Suffolk County taxation instead, along with their own school district's levy.

Is the 27.5% increase a one-time event? The specific size of this year's increase is tied to the final year of the nine-year glide path, so it isn't expected to repeat at that scale next year automatically. But the underlying uncertainty around the plant's future, tied to the power supply agreement's expiration around 2027-2028, means the Village's revenue picture isn't fully settled yet.

Where can I verify the current tax rate myself? The Village of Port Jefferson publishes its adopted budget and assessment roll directly, and it's worth asking your agent or the listing agent for the current fiscal year's adopted rate rather than relying on a prior tax bill.

This is exactly the kind of local detail that doesn't show up on a portal listing and won't show up in a generic buyer's guide either. If you're weighing a Port Jefferson address against another North Shore town and want a straight answer about what a specific property's tax picture actually looks like this year, not last year, that's a conversation worth having before you write an offer. Conor Hertell works these towns every day and can walk you through what a given address is actually on the hook for. Buy or sell? Call Hertell today.