Normally, I do not respond to anonymous questions. Most all newspapers, the Sentinel included, will not print anonymous letters. To do otherwise would allow people to take free shots at anyone they want, hiding from view and protecting their own identity while they criticize or question others.
However, sometimes the questions raised in an anonymous letter are worth sharing with the community. Such as the case of an unsigned letter mailed to the Sentinel, raising multiple questions about the proposed bond issues to pay for repairs to the schools and Public Safety Building. Voters will decide in the Oct. 4 municipal election whether the borough should borrow up to $12 million to fund long-overdue repairs at all the buildings.
This is an important decision for Wrangell. The buildings all need a lot of work. The items include new roofing, siding, flooring, boilers, fire alarm system and heating/ventilation controls. The buildings range in age from 35 to 53 years old, and no wooden structure can stand in the rain in Southeast for that long and not deteriorate.
Repairing the damage will add to the borough budget, probably requiring an increase in property taxes.
And that’s what bothers the anonymous letter writer, who asked several questions that I will try to answer.
Yes, the borough’s purchase of the former sawmill property at 6-Mile took the land off the property tax roll. It looks like that will cost the borough about $20,000 a year in lost revenue until it can sell or lease the property to a private owner(s). That is a small number, about 1% of the borough’s property tax collection this year. And, to answer the writer’s question, the borough assesses taxes on property it leases long term to private parties.
The writer asks how much tax revenue the borough is losing by its ownership of the former Wrangell Institute property. Zero. The land was never taxed. It was exempt when it was operated as a federal boarding school and during its brief ownership decades ago by Cook Inlet Region Inc., the regional Native corporation for Southcentral Alaska. The borough plans to subdivide the lands and sell off the lots for housing development, which would make the land taxable. But that will take time and money — the borough will need to spend several million dollars to install utilities and build streets before selling the land.
As for lost property taxes on the former Byford junkyard at 4-Mile, now owned by the borough, here too the plan is to sell the lots for private development. That would put the land back on the tax rolls — which is where it was before the state spent $17 million to clean up the toxic mess at the site after the borough had acquired the land in a property tax foreclosure. Look for the assembly to take up the land sale this fall.
And the writer wanted to know how much property in town is exempt from taxes. Of $289 million worth of land, buildings and other improvements in Wrangell, $150 million is taxable. The non-taxable property includes homes owned by senior citizens and disabled veterans, assessed at almost $35 million. That’s the largest single category of tax-exempt property in town.
The other $104 million in non-taxable property includes the Wrangell Medical Center, which cost $30 million to build, and other property owned by SEARHC; state-owned property; the post office and other federally owned buildings; borough-owned buildings; and churches. That tax-exempt list is set by state and federal law — nothing the borough can do about it.
Yes, the letter writer is correct, it was the borough’s responsibility to ensure that the schools and Public Safety Building were adequately maintained. And, yes, in a better world, some of the work would have been done over the years rather than piling up into a more expensive repair bill.
Regardless, it adds up all the same: What wasn’t done in the past should be done now, and the community needs to decide how much it can afford and how to pay the bills.
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