The Haines Borough is adopting a new method for assessing property values. Officials warn that virtually all property assessments will be different this year. Some will go up, some will go down, but the borough’s focus is on getting rid of the inequities of the old system.

There are around three thousand (3,000) properties in the Haines Borough. Each property has been assessed individually. But some have not been inspected or reassessed in over 10 years. And those that have been done have been assessed by different individuals, because of staff turnover. This can lead to some homeowners paying more than others for similar properties. 

Michael Dahle is a contractor who has been hired by the borough to work through the problem. 

Dahle: “For this year the focus is to bring a little more uniformity to the assessed values. Fair and equitable is a common phrase that’s used within the assessment profession, and what that’s looking at is you want equity between properties and different classes of properties so that everybody is paying their fair share of taxes.”

Dahle has 20 years experience in the field. He came to work in Haines in his early career, among other places.

Dahle: “And worked for a couple years under a contract, then I ran off and got a bunch of experience in other places and ended up providing consultation services to all of the Washington counties through the department of revenue, and got into writing courses and training, and teaching as well as still doing assessment work.”

The borough does not have an assessor on staff currently, so it signed Dahle on for two years to train two employees and overhaul the system. 

Dahle is implementing a new method, called the mass appraisal system. He is following a three-step process. First, get all property assessments up to date. Since November he and borough staff have updated values for 580 properties and inspected in person 175 of them. Inspectors wearing high-visibility vests go to each residence and knock at the door to announce themselves. They take pictures and measurements to see if the buildings conform to the descriptions they have on file. 

Dahle says this can be a bit delicate.

Dahle: “In over twenty years of working in this profession I have many stories, some of which involve threats to my life. Yeah. You are going onto people’s properties, lots of people are sensitive to that, we try to be sensitive to their sensitivity, and be respectful. But at the same time we do have to gather the best information we can to keep the assessed values equitable.”

After gathering data on-site, Dahle looks at real estate sales records. This tells him what the current market values are for different areas.

 Finally, he enters the property’s characteristics into a computer program. That includes home size, outbuildings, whether there is a deck, if there is a view, the amount of useable land, and what state the buildings are in. The computer program then gives a new estimate for the property.

Because this system is automated, property taxes can be adjusted every year. Dahle says they are working out a rotation so that inspections will be completed every five years for the entire borough.

Some properties that haven’t been reassessed in a long time may see a significant increase in tax. Borough Manager Annette Kreitzer says she is looking at ways of softening the blow to property owners.

Kreitzer: “The reason for all of this work is to bring that fairness back to property taxes, it’s been out of whack for some time I think. And we know people will have questions, and we are available to try to help answer those questions once they see their assessments.”

Property tax bills will arrive in residents’ mailboxes by early April. Kreitzer says there will be a process to appeal the new values.

Another Southeast town is in the midst of doing the same thing. Wrangell is reassessing all of its properties that haven’t been done in years.

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that all property tax bills would be different this year. It is the assessments that will be different, the tax bills will depend on the mil rate.