Alex Gimarc: Pictures at an Exhibition (that is the Anchorage property appraisal counter)

By ALEX GIMARC

With apologies to Emerson, Lake and Palmer (Pictures at an Exhibition), 1971, I am new member of Mayor Suzanne LaFrance’s new 30% Club (property valuation increase 30% since she was sworn in as Mayor).  Visited the Hill Building Monday morning to file my appeal.

It has been some years since I have been in this room, mostly because prior to the last two years, the property valuation guys under the direction of the sadly departed Jerry Wedelich honestly did their jobs, which was to value property at actual prices supported by actual real estate sales and / or actual appraisal data.

Instead, they acceded to the LaFrance diktat to value property at rates that would most advantage the Muni in her rapacious pursuit of “mo money.”  In short, she and her Assembly majority got greedy.  Worse, if the reports are accurate, that greed is politically based, with Republican property owners getting hammered worse than their democrat neighbors.

The room was filled with individuals, over half of them confused oldsters, wondering how property they own is hundreds of thousands of dollars more valuable than it was just two short years ago.  LaFrance and her lackeys are clearly preying on oldsters, most of them fixed income people.  And she made the decision to do this on her first day in office.  How proud they must be.  There was a lot of anger in the room.  The younger citizens tried to argue their case and were politely educated as to the error of their ways by the resident staff.  The oldsters glumly mostly knew that the die were already cast.

Note that the entire discussion this year is about the valuation increase this year rather than the combined rape and pillage operation over the last two years.  The Muni and its Board of Equalization operates under the silly notion that if they get away with an outrageous increase in valuation one year, it sucks to be you, and you can’t bring it up the following year.

What is LaFrance doing?  She came into office July 2024.  At the time, she ordered her property assessment employees to jack up property evaluations for 2025.  They complied.  An example home, built in 2004, increased only $73,000 2012 – 2024, was up a whopping $204,000 over the last two years.    These numbers have no connection with the actual value of the home as there are few sales in that neighborhood due to the low interest rates in recent years.

The Mayor’s office publishes a Property Appraisal Annual Valuation Report yearly.  It is interesting reading, especially in light of what LaFrance has ordered her property valuation staff to do.  The PowerPoint can be found on the Muni’s website.  Take a look at 2026, 2025 and 2024 (all linked).  Residential property values increased 4.3% in 2025, 4.4% in 2024, and 4% in 2023, numbers that do not justify or support the massive valuation increases over the last two years.

What do I think is going to happen?  I expect the MOA Property Appraisal Board of Equalization will uphold most if not all of the increases, mostly because property owners have no options other than elect a new Mayor (one year out) or a new Assembly (April), neither of which touches the last two rounds of valuation increases in any meaningful way.  Still, we can take names while the fraud and abuse continues.

If you are of the opinion that the Mayor is committing fraud on property owners, legalized theft from senior citizens, there will eventually be some sort of political pushback. The largest of which would be total destruction of public trust in the bodies committing the fraud – the MOA Property Appraisal Office which jacked up valuations to levels completely unsupported by real estate sales, and the Board of Equalization supporting those increases over the last two years.

How well the current system will operate in a future where public trust in the institutions has been breached is anyone’s guess, though I don’t think there will be a positive outcome.  And like we have seen with the public health apparat over the last five years with COVID and the Transitioning Industrial Complex, once you destroy public trust and confidence in government entities, it will be decades before it returns, which is as it should be.  Trust earned remains until it is destroyed after which it will be a generation or two before it returns, if ever.

What would that pushback be?  One would be to view the Board of Equalization as the political body it has chosen to be, more interested in upholding whatever democrat form of public theft they come up with than anything else.  Another will be to view the MOA Property Appraisal Office as an enemy, no longer interested in fairly evaluating real estate and property values, simply becoming a vehicle to generate whatever cash flow the most recent democrat mayor is demanding.

Do these guys know what level of destruction they are committing on their credibility among the property owners of Anchorage?  Do they even care?  Or are they simply saluting smartly and following orders, generally a less than positive response?

At this point, the battle is joined and we are about to see some pushback by property owners.  The form of that pushback is anyone’s guess, though it would be a great issue for the upcoming Muni elections, and an opportunity to flip control of the Assembly.  Lawsuits and Assembly ordinances and resolutions are other possibilities.

Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.