10 years ago
Soboleff-McRae Veterans Village officials don’t think property tax should be levied on the second floor of their building. The Haines Borough manager disagrees.
At manager David Sosa’s recommendation, the assembly last week declined to introduce an ordinance which, if passed, would have granted a “community purpose exemption” for the residential floor, relieving the facility of paying property tax.
The bottom floor of the building is slated to house offices for nonprofits. The second floor has 11 apartments.
Sosa said the upper floor of the Veterans Village, owned by Haines Assisted Living, doesn’t meet the state’s community purpose exemption standards because HAL’s definition of who can live in the apartments is too broad.
“The only definition that they provide to live within the veterans housing is that someone be a veteran. This means that a 25-year-old veteran of service with no medical needs, no financial needs, no needs of any kind, is qualified to be in there,” Sosa said.
Sosa said he asked the board to more narrowly define who can live in the apartments – for example, applicants who have a service-connected disability as rated by the Veterans Health Administration as 30 percent or more, who have a demonstrated and verified medical condition that requires a supported living environment, or who can demonstrate financial needs as defined by state and federal guidelines for poverty.
The HAL board refused to make Sosa’s adjustments.
“To their credit, all of the people living in there (presently) meet the threshold that I’ve identified. But they will not adopt that as the threshold of the organization,” Sosa said.
HAL board president Jim Studley said there are several reasons the board won’t narrow its definition, including that the $6.1 million the Veterans Village received from the Alaska Legislature in 2012 was for the benefit of all veterans, not just disabled or low-income ones.
The board also doesn’t want to have to deny a veteran in need.
“For us to start discriminating against one veteran or another, we’re not going to do that,” Studley said.
At last week’s assembly meeting, HAL community manager Vince Hansen urged members to at least introduce the ordinance and let the public weigh in on whether HAL should have to pay the $5,144 in property taxes for the building’s second floor.
Resident Lucy Harrell also asked the assembly to “make it possible for us to debate this matter and decide as a community how we feel about it.”
In response to a question by Mayor Stephanie Scott, Sosa clarified that giving HAL the exemption would in no way be illegal. The assembly can grant a community purpose exemption for anything it wants, Sosa clarified.
“Code does allow that. It is not illegal,” Sosa said. “In my opinion, it would be contrary to the established standards of the state assessor’s organization, it would be contrary to the advice of the borough attorney, and contrary to the advice of the borough manager.”
The $5,144 annual tax burden, when divided among the 11 apartments, would add another $468 in rent per year, per apartment, Hansen said.
“In renting apartments over the last couple of months, we have had residents who would not have been able to move in if their rent had been even an additional $25 per month. This may be surprising to some of us that (people in this community) live this close to the edge, but for some, every dollar of income is already dedicated to daily living expenses,” Hansen said.
However, the assembly sided with Sosa and postponed introduction of the ordinance until borough staff develops a policy on community purpose exemptions and the assembly approves it.
Assembly member Jerry Lapp said it would be unfair of the borough to relieve the building’s second floor of property taxes.
“That’s all this is: an apartment building. So they are competing with other apartments that have no exemption in the Haines area,” Lapp said.
Assembly member George Campbell agreed that HAL has been given the chance to revise their standards for residency, but simply chose not to do so.
“The organization that operates this facility has had the opportunity and could make changes to make this a very easy decision. But, presently, basically we are being asked to move forward with tax-exempt status for an apartment house,” Campbell said.
In making his recommendation to deny the application for a community purpose exemption, Sosa relied on Alaska case law, borough attorney advice and information from the state assessor’s office.
Sosa said the borough’s policy on community purpose exemptions is flimsy for several reasons, including that it doesn’t require organizations to prove on an annual or semiannual basis that they still meet exemption requirements.
Sosa said staff is working on a draft policy modeled after Juneau’s. When the policy comes into place, organizations that are currently exempt under the old system will need to reapply.
The Southeast Alaska State Fair, Port Chilkoot Parade Ground, American Bald Eagle Foundation, Haines Animal Rescue Kennel, Charles Anway Cabin and Takshanuk Watershed Council currently hold community purpose exemptions.
To obtain a community purpose exemption in the borough, Sosa said the applicant has to meet all of three criteria: the property must be owned by a nonprofit, the rental income derived from the property can’t exceed the actual cost to the owner of the use by the renter, and the property must be used exclusively for community purposes.
25 years ago
Bear watches, waits for bite of anglers’ catches
A juvenile brown bear has been cleaning up at a popular fishing spot on the Kelsall River. In at least two instances, the bear swiped multiple salmon from anglers who left their catch on the bank at a boat landing, about three miles up the Kelsall River.
It got three coho from Corkey Harris.
Harris and a friend were fishing early one Friday morning about two weeks ago when the bear approached, grabbed his fish, and ran up a hill across the road there.
Harris has fished the spot about 15 years and didn’t want to abandon it, so as he caught more fish, he’d leave one on the bank to keep the bruin at a distance. The bear returned twice more, at about 20-minute intervals, with the same routine.
“He’d kind of casually mosey in there, but when he got one, he’d jam up the hill,” Harris said. “It got comfortable the last couple times. It knew what it was doing.”
A Canadian fisherman told a fish and game worker the bear pulled the trick when he was fishing at the same spot, hauling three fish off the bank.
The fisherman and another there at the time finally surrendered the spot to the bear, but not before following its track up the hillside and finding its vantage point.
“He had a lookout up there where he was watching, just waiting for somebody to catch a fish,” said state sportfishing biologist Randy Ericksen.
The bear, described as “healthy looking,” apparently has left the area, Ericksen said.
40 years ago
Berger hearings: Land is a way of life
There were no casual bystanders in the audience. Everyone in the Klukwan tribal house that evening had come to speak – and listen.
“It was the most people I’ve ever seen show up here for an outside person,” declared Tony Strong, a Klukwan resident. “When a Sealaska representative comes to the village, he gets two, maybe three people to come.”
About 25 Tlingít Natives sat quietly in the hall as a middle-aged white man in a suit and tie listened carefully to each of a dozen speakers tell about their lives and concerns since the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971.
These hearings will identify the common denominators, identify the continuity of the people,” said Klukwan, Inc., official Edward Warren.
Indeed, the purpose of the hearings in Klukwan and Haines last week was to gather information from people whose ancestors had been able to trace strong interrelationships between themselves and another “common denominator” : land. Former Canadian Supreme Court Justice Thomas Berger has been touring the state for over a year to collect testimony from hundreds of Native people who are trying to regain their connection with the earth and their cultural heritage.
COMMISSION PURPOSE
The Alaska Native Review Commission (ANRC) was formed by Berger and a group of Native people to assess the impact of ANCSA on its participants. It arose from the joint efforts of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and the World Council of Indigenous People. In a speech before the Alaska World Affairs Council (AWAC) on Oct. 18, Berger said that “ANCSA is a pioneering venture in the settlement of Native claims in the modern era. So is the Alaska Native Review Commission. For the first time, an international Native people’s organization has established its own commission to consider the land claims issue.”
Klukwan was the forty-first village Berger traveled to with the intent to simply listen. The major issues that surfaced in the Klukwan and Haines hearings followed the common themes of subsistence, Native sovereignty, corporations and the land itself.
“It’s important that Alaskans should realize what’s happening,” Berger said in an interview in Haines. “They’re really saying ‘We want the right to say what’s happening on our lands.’”
The concept of “living off the land” has become clichéd by people for whom such a lifestyle is an option. For many Native Alaskans, however, subsistence continues to be a way of life vital to their survival.
At the Klukwan hearings, Lani Strong-Hotch stressed the importance of subsistence.
“I’m upset that this issue was not raised as a major issue when the land claims were being discussed, because that’s our life. It’s important to me that this lifestyle continues. She maintained that those involved with the creation and passage of ANCSA “saw land and money, not subsistence.”
Much Native frustration resulted from “our whole outlook (being) really overloaded with requirements,” said Strong-Hotch.
The excessive “requirements” resulted in a lack of control over resources, according to a number of Native speakers. Strong-Hotch felt that the weakened power should move Native communities to action.
“As Native leaders we should start acting like sovereignty,” she declared.
Strong-Hotch’s concern has been echoed by Natives throughout Berger’s tour. The former justice recognized this common theme in an opening statement at a subsistence roundtable discussion earlier this month in Anchorage: “It seems to me the issue of subsistence is not one of the competition for resources, not simply a question of allocation; it is rather an issue of a different order of magnitude – the survival of village Alaska.”
Frank Hughes, Sr. pointed out the change in attitude toward subsistence compared with early statehood days when “if we used our subsistence lifestyle, bang, you went to jail.”
The issue of Native control over subsistence was exemplified by Annie Hotch, 84, as she expressed her concern in her native tongue.
“We are losing our total lifestyle,” she said. “Do you suppose that a non-Native would allow it if they were told to use only four to five dozen eggs a season? How can we live with four to five dozen salmon?”
Lani Strong-Hotch also expressed her disappointment about the loss of Native control over aboriginal hunting and fishing rights since ANCSA and, more recently, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980. “Now we have to rely on the state government and the fish and game boards and all the things they pass every year,” she said. “I get frightened that we may not be able to continue fishing from our river here. What’s going to happen if they decide ‘the Natives don’t need that fish, they can buy hamburger from the stores.’ Who’s to say they won’t do it? They’ve passed laws year after year inflicting changes on Native people. I can see where that can occur; I’m not saying that they’ll go right ahead and do that, but I am concerned that it might take place.”
SOVEREIGNTY
The issue of Native sovereignty ties in closely with subsistence. For these people, control over use of the land and its resources also means cultural autonomy. In his Oct. 18 speech, Berger claimed that “sovereignty is a legal doctrine with a very special meaning under U.S. law. But it also, in Alaska and in the lower 48, is a particular reflection of the worldwide movement of indigenous people for self-rule or self-determination.”
Charles King, Sr. took the issue a step further by pointing out that Alaska Natives still retained their power of self-government. “The only way to say you do not have sovereignty is to volunteer to give it up,” he said. “So I say, do not give it up.”