Borough assessors are in the field in the Chilkat Valley this week. 

Interim borough manager Elke Doom said Tuesday that they started out the road and are working their way back to town. 

“They’ve been in some areas that are not easy to find, these homes and these cabins,” she told an assembly personnel committee. The crew was in Excursion Inlet last week. 

The borough’s contract assessor, Martins Onskulis, said this week and later in November the team would focus on properties within town limits. 

“We have identified specific properties for inspection and typically stop at each site to take photographs, verify measurements as needed, and, of course, notify property owners of our presence,” he wrote in an email. 

The visits come after staff at the Appraisal Company of Alaska, where Onskulis works, spent the summer reviewing property card information, legal descriptions, property data and other fields in the Municipal Assessment Report System, which is the borough’s primary database for property records. 

“The ongoing data cleanup is essential and requires substantial time and care to maintain accuracy, Onskulis wrote. 

He said the company has completed an inventory and review of properties in the Chilkat Lake area, as well as along the upper Chilkat River, Nugget Creek, Takhin River and Glacier Point. 

Last week they also inspected properties in Excursion Inlet. Onskulis said they hiked from Swanson Harbor to the cannery site to look at each property along the way. 

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