The Haines Borough Assembly is seeking five community members to join a new ad hoc committee to look at changes to the borough’s property tax assessment process.
The new committee comes after a summer of some intense public criticism this year following a dramatic rise in some property assessments and resulting tax bills.
Assembly members in favor of the new committee say the group’s works will be critical to recommending potential new policies on assessments and pinpointing what borough functions can be made better moving forward.
Residents have until 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 10, to submit a letter of interest if they wish to serve on the committee. Mayor Tom Morphet will appoint the residents.
The decision to seek members for the new committee was made during a special workshop about property tax assessments on Thursday evening. It is one of multiple recent actions being taken by assembly members in hopes of rebuilding public trust and addressing some residents’ calls for more transparency and accountability from public officials in the assessment process.
Just a few days before the meeting, a special assembly meeting was held to introduce an ordinance that would extend the due date for delinquent property tax payments from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31. The meeting was the first of three meetings necessary for the ordinance to pass at the next regular assembly meeting, scheduled for Nov. 14.
During the Thursday night workshop, much of the discussion surrounded changes in the borough’s assessment process and resulting pushback from property owners.
The borough this spring hired a contract assessor, Michael Dahle, after the previous assessor died. Dahle found that some properties hadn’t been inspected for up to 15 years, meaning their value hadn’t kept up with recent rises in real estate values. Borough code requires properties be reassessed every six years.
Dahle and assessor-in-training Donna Lambert visited properties throughout the summer to update the most out-of-date properties.
Following the new assessments property owners this year saw modest increases in their assessments and resulting tax bills, although some residents saw dramatic spikes in the value of their homes.
The majority of properties have seen only minor rises with 52% of property owners only seeing their tax bills go up by $30 or less, according to borough data, The borough said that resulted from some properties that hadn’t been properly assessed for years and were a result of correcting old inequities as well as rising property values. Across Alaska and nationally tax assessment values have surged over the past few years, which experts say is driven by a tight real estate market.
In Haines, assessments went up by an average of 17% based on new site inspections and adjustments based on market trends, but the mill rate was reduced. Overall the borough is projected to take in about $190,000 more tax revenue, which it says is needed to account for inflation.
Assembly members acknowledged the system needed to be improved and that it would be hard on taxpayers.
“The place where we were at was out of compliance with the state, and there is going to be a change,” said assembly member Kevin Forster. “And, that change is probably going to be painful.”
During the meeting, some residents questioned the methods he used to conduct assessments, arguing some assessments didn’t account for unique characteristics of buildings, or that statistical methods were flawed.
Some residents questioned Dahle’s credentials.
According to the borough, Dahle previously worked in Washington state and has more than 20 years of experience in assessments in both Washington and Alaska.
Dahle is not currently accredited by the Alaska Association of Assessing Officers but accreditation is not a requirement for him to serve. State assessor Joe Caissie said in an email that many municipalities in Alaska do not require AAAO certification.
Dahle was present at the meeting via Zoom and answered many questions from assembly members about the software and methods used to assess properties this year. He also entertained some residents’ questions about specific assessments, though most of his answers were directed toward addressing the bigger picture of Haine’s current issues in its assessment process.
Morphet said the new ad-hoc committee’s efforts will reach beyond the issues that arose during the 2023 property assessments, calling the borough’s issues surrounding assessments “a problem 20 years in the making,” and noted they will not be an easy or quick fix.
During the meeting, assembly members also discussed plans to issue a formal acknowledgment of failures during the assessment process and an apology to residents in hopes of rebuilding trust.
Throughout the assessment process, some residents, like Brenda Josephson, spoke about what she called a “lack of professionalism” and “intimidation” by the borough’s lands department.
Borough manager Annette Kreitzer acknowledged that in some cases borough staff could have done a better job communicating with concerned residents and said she was looking into providing customer service training to staff. She noted that there were just two staff responding to hundreds of appeals and shared nearly 30 positive responses from residents after interactions with staff.
“Yes, we can do a better job of communicating this information. If there are other areas of concern, we’ll address those. I look forward to improving our communications and hearing constructive suggestions,” she wrote in an email to CVN.
Still, some assembly members thought a public acknowledgment of shortcomings would be helpful.
“I would recommend that one of the things we do as a borough government is to officially at a public meeting acknowledge that our communication was weak and in some cases inadequate for the reality of this season,” said assembly member Debra Schnabel.
A timeline of when the apology would be made is still unclear. Morphet said it will likely be discussed at a coming meeting.
“I do think that we tried to do the right thing, and we did it in the wrong way,” he said. “We did it not as well as we could have.”