Dan Smith: Anchorage’s New Gold Rush of property taxes, equity theft, and the $12 million school levy

By DAN SMITH

With the arrival of 2026 and the New Year comes a new tax assault on the citizens of Anchorage.

The school tax levy is on the assembly conveyor belt and ready to be processed like pay dirt from an economically marginal strip mine.  Tax proposals around here lately have been sifting like sand through a sluice box to see if any new color shows.

Recently local residents had to run off the mayor’s claim jumpers that were boosting their purchasing power in the form of a 3% ales tax and a promise to reduce the amount of theft in the usual and customary amount of property tax.

After successfully defending our claims against the new sales tax, we find written on a green card and delivered to our mail boxes, that property taxes are spiking by way of the municipal assessor and his sly claim to a man’s homestead, while he is busy panning for a living.

Apparently there is a new scale at the assessor’s office that might be in need of recalibration.  Or maybe the assessor found a few gold veins under the frost heaves of several local driveways.

Property tax is not a voluntary transaction between a home owner and the municipal bandits. Whatever equity you think you might be accruing in your homestead is swept away by the relentless annual currents of property tax. Property taxes are a perpetual taking, forcing owners to “rent” their land and homes from the municipality or face fines, liens and forfeiture.  It is equity theft.

The only difference between a claim jumper and a tax assessor is the bandit usually starts off his attack by presenting his six shooter for your consideration of his demand.

Appeal of one’s property tax assessment has been publicly encouraged by the mayor and the other local government officials.

While the assessor’s most recent price spike is a painful thing, it is not as detrimental to ones’ net worth as the ongoing and endless raises in property taxes, year after year, over a long history of municipal theft. Over the last 26 years the value of this miner’s dirt has risen 500%!  That is just the land only!

So while a recent 30%-40% percent assessment spike that some have experienced in assessed values signals something very wrong, the cumulative effect of over a quarter century worth of 3-15% annual raises is just as crippling as the icy cold January sluice water on an arthritic pair of on an old prospectors hands.

The executive invitation to appeal the most recent assessments is endearing.  But one cannot help but wonder if the commotion, cost and time commitment of that process is somehow timed to divert attention from the aforementioned school tax levy.  What will that levy be spent on?  How much was it again? Twelve million dollars?  They are a bunch of pikers.  If there is no defined beneficiary and no measure of success they can be held accountable for, then why not $25 or $50 million?

Who will pay for the new levy?  Well it’s property owners of course. More equity theft.  Is this a one-time armed hold up or an ongoing robbery we can look forward to every year?

From what can be gathered, local residents are being given just one opportunity to speak their piece on the matter.  The school tax levy has a short fuse and is probably considered the least objectionable by those that want to jump your claim. It’s always the schools that demand and usually get the biggest slice of the pie with the least amount of accountability.

The main problem is that this streak of pay dirt has been played out.  Tax payers are tapped out.  Now our elected officials are attempting to reprocess the tailings to see if any gold was missed over the last 50 to 70 years.  Trying to tax yourself into prosperity is like an old sourdough standing with both feet in his own bucket of water and trying to hoist himself up the bank by the handle.  It’s a futile effort.  It creates no new wealth.  At the end of the day all the old timer has is wet feet.

Anchorage prospectors (homeowners) will likely appeal their recent assessments with some degree of success.  But unless the school tax levy is also defeated by way of public testimony, our pokes will be pilfered all the same.  Our wallets will be further lightened and the dust we have sweated for will fall into the hands of the tax man to be spent at his discretion.

If the School tax levy passes, we will no doubt continue to see a top heavy Anchorage School District administration flourish with no meaningful change to the educational outcome of the students.  If the school district needs more money, it would seem to make more sense to cease funding of failed and ineffective homeless programs and reallocate those funds.

Alternatively, It is probably way past time that the Anchorage School District benefitted from some good old fashioned competition.  This academic monopoly we suffer here should be broken into 3 or 4 separate districts.  School board members should be elected by district making them accountable to their specific constituents.

Here is another radical idea, maybe it should be required that any state nuggets which wash downstream from the rich ore deposits in Juneau to ASD should follow the student. Parents and students will bring that precious metal with them and flock to the successful schools with the best outcomes. Failing or under performing schools will copy the successful school models or come up with competitive and even better alternatives to attract and retain students.

There is plenty of money being spent in these parts on education. The way we deliver and spend our hard earned treasure simply needs to be refined.

Daniel Smith is an architect and lifelong Alaskan.