Some Beach Road residents are requesting a moratorium on property taxes until utilities and road access have been restored to their neighborhood.

On Dec. 2, a landslide on Mount Riley killed two residents, destroyed several houses, and left most homes on Beach Road Extension separated from town. The Haines Borough has kept a portion of the neighborhood under mandatory evacuation while awaiting the results of a geotechnical study that officials hope will inform decisions about short-term access and long-term use.

“How are you going to charge me taxes for a piece of property you won’t let me go to? We’re asking that from December 2 on, all taxes be prorated until services are returned,” Beach Road resident Todd Winkel said.

On March 10, the borough mailed notices of value to all property owners. The assessed value, combined with mill rate, is used to determine how much a person owes in property taxes each year.

This year, the borough lands department faced the unprecedented challenge of assessing the value of homes cut off from the rest of town by a landslide debris field, in an area that is undergoing a geotechnical assessment to determine whether it’s safe to inhabit in the long term.

“Properties were reassessed with values adjusted for proximity to the slide from the data presented by Alaska (Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys) and Haines (Emergency Operations Center),” said borough assessor Dean Olsen, referencing a Dec. 18 report that reduced the size of the mandatory evacuation zone based on landslide modeling.

Beach Road residents reported a decrease in land values but not building values in the assessments they received. The reductions varied depending on whether properties are located in the mandatory evacuation zone.

“Ours got cut by about fifteen percent,” green zone resident Michael Balise said.

For those in the mandatory evacuation zone, the decrease was more significant.

“They dropped land value by fifty percent. They didn’t appear to change the building value,” Winkel said.

Property owners in other parts of the borough, whose homes were damaged during the December storms, also saw a decrease in their assessed values. Spruce Grove resident Lindsey Edgar, whose home was damaged by flooding, saw a 50% decrease in her building’s assessed value. She said her land value was unchanged.

“At first, I was bummed, but then (a friend) was like, ‘You pay less in taxes,’” Edgar said. She said she doubts she’ll be able to sell the property in the near future.

“(Real estate agent) Pam Long looked at it after the flood. Her recommendation was don’t even try to sell it for three to five years, until people forget about the flooding,” Edgar said.

Winkel said he thinks the borough should be exempting Beach Road home owners from property taxes rather than lowering values.

He said he worries lowering assessed values could impact what homeowners are offered in the event of a buyout. Offers made to property owners would be based on “market value and other factors,” according to Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management public information officer Jeremy Zidek.

“It’s not about the value. We think our properties still have value. It’s about the fact that they would charge us tax at all,” Winkel said. He said residents are appealing the assessments, asking for an exemption.

“A fair and accurate assessment of our property values cannot, and should not, be done at this time. We need to wait to determine if we will have restoration of road and power. Without road and power, our properties will likely have significantly lower values than if they have road and power,” green zone resident Noble Anderson wrote in an email to Olsen.

Appeals that are not resolved to an owner’s satisfaction through direct communication with the assessor go before the borough’s Board of Equalization for a hearing. The board is composed of Haines Borough Assembly members and meets in May.

Winkel said he expects residents will continue to fight the issue if the matter isn’t resolved to their satisfaction.

“If they send us a bill, a number of us have said we won’t pay taxes,” he said.

Olsen said he’s received a range of feedback from Beach Road residents about the value notices “from requesting no change, to my property is worthless without access.”

He said his department will likely need to reassess Beach Road homes annually as more information becomes available.

“It is obvious the slide influences the value of the properties. But until the report from the geologists is presented updating the condition of identified hazard areas, and a mitigation plan to resolve the stability issues is agreed to and acted on, property sales from this area are unlikely. Therefore, assessments for this area will have to be updated annually based on area conditions as reported by geologists until some form of stability returns to this market area,” Olsen said.

The borough’s 30-day property value appeal deadline is April 10.