At the assembly’s May 24 meeting, members unanimously approved a resolution setting the property tax levy for this year at 12.75 mills, which is $1,275 on every $100,000 in assessed value, the same rate as last year.
The tax rate is 4 mills for property outside the borough’s service area, such as Thoms Place toward the southern end of Wrangell Island and Meyers Chuck.
Property tax payments are due by Oct. 15.
The borough estimates it will collect almost $1.8 million in property taxes in the fiscal year that starts July 1, with more than 96% coming from land and buildings within the service area.
The full assessed value of taxable property in the borough for 2022 is $151.4 million, a decline of $26.6 million from last year when the new hospital was included on the tax rolls.
The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium last year voluntarily paid $331,000 in property taxes on the Wrangell Medical Center, even though the property is exempt under state law. The borough and SEARHC last month concluded a negotiated settlement under which the health care provider agreed to pay the borough $45,000 a year for 10 years to help the community, while the borough acknowledged that SEARHC is exempt from taxes on its properties in Wrangell.
Property taxes unpaid by Oct. 15 at 5 p.m. will accrue interest and penalties.
Borough Manager Jeff Good said the borough’s contractor reassessed about one-third of properties on the tax rolls this year, and said it was a rough process — some of the properties had been missed for two to three decades.
“Just with the increases in property values over the past three, four years — they’ve gone up considerably — so us not doing all of the properties and just hitting certain sections of town just makes it harder,” he said Thursday. “It’s not equal over all parts of the community. Actually, which was surprising to me, some of those properties hadn’t been assessed in almost 20 years. I’m not sure how that happened.”
Good said the borough is trying to get back on track so assessments are on more of a routine schedule “and it’s not a shock when those property assessments get adjusted to current values.”
Assemblymember Bob Dalrymple was “quite surprised we had properties that hadn’t been appraised for 30 years,” he said after the Board of Equalization meeting on May 17. The board reviews property owner appeals of assessed valuations.
Typically, the borough assesses a third of the properties every year, Good said.
“It’s just hard to do the entire town in one year,” he said. “ Our goal next year is to do everyone. That will give us an opportunity to look at the mill rate and hopefully lower the mill rate.” A lower mill rate on higher property values would produce the same revenue for the borough.
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