By Matt Hawthorne
The Haines Borough’s assessment office is out of compliance with
state law and using outdated technology for site visits and record keeping, according to
an audit by the state assessor.
Steve Van Sant and Ron Brown, assessor and assistant assessor for the
State of Alaska, last month conducted an on-site performance audit, part of a compliance
review to bring Alaska’s municipalities up to state regulations and to ensure
equitable assessment statewide.
Although their report didn’t blame borough assessor John Wurst, it
was critical of his department.
The state found the borough lacks a required re-evaluation system.
"It is strongly recommended that in order to adhere to state law,
the borough assembly adopt a resolution directing the assessor to accomplish a
reevaluation of all property within the borough ‘…over the shortest period of
time practicable.’"
In order to accomplish this, the borough needs to pass a standard time
frame and adhere to it. The report recommends a four-year rotation.
To do this in a timely manner, the report "strongly"
recommended one-time hire of a contract assessor. A contractor could help complete an
inspection cycle of the borough, which the auditors believe is too large a job for the
department because its duties also include land management.
Otherwise "it is only a matter of time before the (tax) roll is so
far out of statutory compliance, a letter of major error is almost guaranteed in the
future."
Assessor Wurst and mayor Fred Shields both said the report was not a
surprise.
"We went years without an assessor," Shields said. "An
assessor is an essential position to any municipality."
Shields said he hopes to put a contract out to bid and have the
inspection cycle brought up to date by the end of the summer. He estimated the cost to be
$50,000, money that would come from the borough’s land fund.
The borough’s previous full-time assessor retired in 2002.
According to former borough manager Robert Venables, assessments have lagged since then.
Wurst’s hire was part of an effort to catch up.
According to the report, following the recommendations would bring the
borough into compliance with the law in a timely manner and lead to fair assessments.
"This is critical in bringing your property records up to date so
adequate and equitable assessments can be made and taxes paid by all property owners are
appropriate and no one can say they are paying more than their fair share."
The audit also was critical of the borough for its paper-based records
and recommended an electronic database, a new numbering system for parcels and a digital
sketching program for building evaluations.
An electronic database would allow the borough to store and retrieve
all property components, and eliminates the risk of losing paper "property
cards," a problem with the current system that is "time consuming, expensive and
totally unnecessary." Changes in file saving should also allow for easy storage,
retrieval and adjustment of records.
In addition to making records electronic, the audit recommends changes
to database software that will record fields such as "sewer, water, view, access,
location, waterfront, topography and any other amenity that may be pertinent to the Haines
market."
In combination with the collection of sales data, this will allow for
more equitable valuations, not just "basic forms of land modeling," according to
the audit.
Other recommendations included: the land assessor carrying a handheld
GPS, rather than a laptop GPS; the collection of income and expense data for commercial
properties; and a valuation for personal property that estimates equitable values.
The report concludes that the "suggestions in this audit are not
expensive but will take time to implement."
