I would like to encourage the Haines community to take advantage of early voting and vote yes on Ballot Initiative No.1, “Shall the Borough increase the property tax exemption level from $150k to $300k for those Haines Residents who qualify?”
This $150,000 number was instituted in the 1970s as a guarantee that no senior citizen would be at risk of losing their forever home to a greedy taxing district. The average home value in America in the 1970s was about $65,000, so the exemption was more than double the average value.
The average home value in the United States is now $361,282 in 2024, according to Zillow, so if we wanted to honor the true intent of the law we should have been raising the exemption to keep pace with inflation all along, at this point it would have been well over $700K!
Many people are hurting from skyrocketing inflation. Seniors on a fixed income do not have the option to make more money. They can not simply vote to raise their incomes as the Borough apparently thinks it can do. The Haines Borough must budget to live within the means of its constituents.
Emma Begly