The Haines Borough Assembly will hold two public hearings next month on Roger Schnabel’s request to receive a ten-year tax exemption on improvements to the land at his proposed 65-lot Hilltop subdivision.
The developer estimated that “enhancement” of the lot — which includes surveying, clearing and grubbing and installing a water system — will cost close to $2.6 million. He wrote that the project would not be financially “feasible” without the tax exemption, which would end early if the parcels were sold before the ten-year mark.
Haines Borough Clerk Alekka Fullerton said that if the assembly approves Schnabel’s request, it will be the first time this kind of exemption has been granted. The exemption category, which became part of borough code in March, was proposed by the housing working group to incentivize development, based on a similar program in Fairbanks.
The revised code allows temporary tax exemptions for property improvements if the improvements are “made for economic development purposes.”
In his memo to the assembly, Schnabel suggested that his project will ultimately benefit Haines’s economy since, he said, he plans to hire locally as much as possible. He also implied that the borough would recoup the lost value of the exemption because the 65 proposed lots would “directly increase property tax revenue” and expand the Haines tax base by allowing for population growth.
The completed preliminary plat for the development was approved by the planning commission at its Aug. 11 meeting after it removed some earlier conditions that borough code did not support.
Borough manager Annette Kreitzer told the commission that borough attorney Brooks Chandler had determined that the body overreached when it insisted on the development of Bartlett Boulevard and the increase of ditch depth from 2.5 to 3 feet as conditions for plat approval. “You do not have the authority under the code to require that,” Kreitzer said.
Schnabel’s is the first long plat proposal that the commission has overseen in nearly a decade, and the process unearthed several contradictions in borough code. The planning commission will develop a new subcommittee in October to clean up and clarify that section of the code.