Tax ‘break’ may not fatten your wallet

We spent some time here recently lauding the Mat-Su Borough Assembly’s efforts to reduce the property tax mill levy.

Mayor Larry DeVilbiss and other recently elected politicos have made a lot a noise about their intentions to reduce taxes, and are no doubt pleased with their success.

However, before the noise of the celebration drowns us out, we’d like to talk about this tax cut briefly.

Looking farther back on our editorial pages we’ve wrote in favor of road bonds, school bonds — in the past equating the cost of the increase to a latte or two. And this is where we failed when we lauded the assembly’s recent efforts to reduce the mill rate. We should have done the math.

In our haste to congratulate the assembly what we didn’t say was this decrease is also equal to a latte for every $200,000 in property’s assessed value.

Here’s the math. Last year the mill rate was 9.98, or $998 per $100,000 of assessed property value. This year, the assembly reduced the mill rate to 9.956, or $996 per $100,000 of assessed property value.

For those who need that math spelled out, $996 from $998 is $2 in savings for each $100,000 of property assessment. To save $20 on your tax bill you would need to own $1 million in property value in the Mat-Su Borough.

Clearly, the assembly has heard the people’s cries to cut taxes.

Though on this side of the budget drafting and approval process it seems like the assembly and mayor did what we asked, but maybe we didn’t ask for what we really wanted.

Perhaps we should have insisted instead that our assembly and mayor be good stewards of our public trust and tax dollars.

If they’d followed that directive, they could have saved the more than $11,000 spent hiring a Florida headhunter to recruit manager candidates after rejecting a first slate of seemingly qualified candidates.

They wrote this check to a Florida company — not an Alaska company — on the heels of a move to eliminate volunteer boards and commissions, citing a few hundred dollars cost as their motivation. Likewise, we are aware of no discussion regarding the cost of hiring that Florida consultant.

It isn’t enough to parrot populist rhetoric about the perils of “big government.” Even the smallest, least intrusive government should also be a good steward of the public’s trust and tax dollars.