Proposed tax cap brings much to consider

April 19, 2005

Spectrum/Timothy Shine

I spent the month of March desperately seeking ways to prevail upon our borough Board of Equalization to lower the latest assessment on my Wasilla home. Retired, on a fixed income, I have struggled to meet property-tax installments. But the recent assessment, if allowed to stand, will force me to sell the home I worked so hard to build.

Without prior experience with the appeal process, I can't predict how things might go at the eventual hearing of my case.

Perhaps there will be a genuine triumph of reason and fairness over a system gone berserk. Such things do happen occasionally to raise the hopes of people paralyzed by repeated exposure to the "dark side" of government.

But when I look at the composition of this board, and the deliberately stilted set of rules for addressing it, I am not optimistic.

In the first place, these people appear to be totally incapable of impartial judgment on the matter. The list of members reads like a who's who of conflicted interests in the Valley.

Mortgage bankers, builders, and Realtors benefit directly from increased sales prices, while fee appraisers profit through business volume the others generate. These people can more than offset the personal tax loss with business profit. Expertise notwithstanding, even if they are pillars of righteous integrity within the community, they should be disqualified as arbiters of something they can profit by that their neighbors cannot.

In theory, the staff at the assessment office is there to assist any would-be petitioners with preparation of an appeal. They are courteous and businesslike to a fault, pointing out posted reminders for civil discourse and behavior in their presence. The fact that a petitioner is fighting for his economic life against the system they represent cannot factor in. Inflexible state statutes are carefully spelled out. A kind of mechanical solicitude pervades.

What they hope to do, I believe, is mask the absurdity of preparing a case for appeal through the very agency whose findings you dispute. The subtext to all discussions lies in your calling into question the judgment of their own "experts." This, if you prevail, will reflect poorly on them. And the token assistance you receive reflects the circling of their wagons against your attack. It is like what a lawyer might expect if he petitioned opposing council for help on their case. The superfluous is readily offered while the substantive is unavailable.

This casts one adrift to plead with real estate types for help in compiling factual ammunition with which to sway the unbiased board. Unable to consider the effect of their decisions on a property owner or his ability to pay an inflated tax, the board must only consider facts such as comparable sales.

Only the Realtor's propriety process can assemble such facts in a timely way. But first you must overcome the Realtor's natural tendency to downplay anything that might affect their bottom line (like low comparables) and then you must convince them to alter a system that is designed to find just the opposite.

Imagine talking a condemned man into doing a computer search for the low cost of hanging rope. You get the picture.

This appeal process, like the larger tax structure it is a part of, is flawed. No individual can be faulted, per se, and yet lives are destroyed by it. It's as if the system has a power all its own, beyond the control of those it victimizes.

The lessons of history seem to have been completely ignored with the ongoing implementation of this system. To avoid the tragic consequences of a "bust" like the one we experienced in the mid 1980s, we see a mechanism for braking the current express train toward a greed-fueled boom like the one that precipitated it.

The borough's claimed mandate to link outrageous fee appraisals to assessments only lends validity to them. The unrealistic profit expectations are officially sanctioned until, as Abe Lincoln put it, "The bottom falls out of the bucket."

My Valley property was fee appraised in 1983 for $50,000 more than it sold for 17 years later. This appraisal typified the artificial bias pervasive in the practice and had no relation to true market value. Thankfully it was ignored by the assessor's office then, but in this current madness would support equal assessed value.

I believe a borough tax cap would serve as a disconnect for assessments from tax bills. My ugly process of appeal would no longer be required for economic survival. If you have no problem meeting our borough tax burden, consider those who do when voting on the cap proposition.

Timothy Shine is a Valley

resident.