Assembly needs to find more revenue, ease homeowners' burden

March 27, 2005

Frontiersman editorial board

Mat-Su property owners are still reeling from this year's valuation sent out by the borough assessor's office. While there are several factors considered in assessing a property's value, the hot housing market seems to be the driving force behind skyrocketing property taxes.

The demand for new homes in the Mat-Su has increased steadily since 1988. Existing homes are short-lived on the market, with many homes selling before they're even advertised. Home builders have been hard-pressed to keep up with the new housing requests and oftentimes have lengthy waiting lists.

While this surge in real estate is seen as a good sign of an extremely healthy economy, the downside is the homeowners who find themselves facing the hard choice of having to sell their family home, as they can no longer afford to pay their rapidly increasing property taxes.

Residents with fixed incomes, such as many of our senior citizens, often are faced with making the choice between buying food or medication as they desperately try to stretch their limited funds. With rising valuations driving up property taxes, they may see their only choice to be selling their home. The question is, what then?

Will they be forced to leave the state to seek a less expensive place to call home? Or will they try to find a reasonably priced apartment to rent? If so, how long before the cost of rent rises as the demand continues to increase and they find themselves facing the same quandary again?

The Mat-Su Borough has had a long-standing $150,000 property tax exemption for its senior citizens. Maybe the time has come for the borough to look at increasing the exemption amount to reflect the current market and adjust for inflation.

We applaud Assembly Member Mary Kvalheim for working to put on the October ballot a severance tax ordinance that would tax raw materials. Property owners cannot continue to foot the entire bill for the Mat-Su Borough and we encourage the Assembly to seek additional new revenue sources to ease their burden.

As a reminder, this Wednesday, March 30, is the deadline to appeal your recent valuation sent out by the Mat-Su Borough Assessor's office.