Kodiak ordinance would make tax-exempt landowners report private users to assessor

The Kodiak Island Borough Assembly takes up an ordinance Thursday that would require federal, state and other tax-exempt landowners to tell the assessor each year who is using their property.

Assembly member Jeremiah Gardner, who requested the ordinance with Scott Smiley, said at a Nov. 12 work session that he wrote it with Assessor Seema Garoutte so the borough can tax property in non-taxable areas. The example offered was an Anchorage contractor bringing $1 million in tools to build a house for the Coast Guard base.

Local businesses already file personal property forms every year, Gardner said, while companies from elsewhere doing business in Kodiak aren't taxed on that property.

"So it levels the playing field with locals and non-locals paying into the pot," he said.

"I'm interested in the multimillion-dollar crane that's out there for the dock work, and there's been multiple cranes there," said Assembly member Scott Arndt. Assembly member Alexander Sweeney said the reports would create a paper trail useful in insurance claims. No one at the work session spoke against the measure.

Under borough code, a private user's stake in public property it leases, borrows or otherwise uses, known as a possessory interest, is already taxable. Any such tax is a lien only on the private interest, not on the public property.

A speaker at the work session said the Coast Guard, Alaska Aerospace or any nonprofit had been expected to report those users, but the code "never said that they had to." Alaska Aerospace is the state-owned corporation that runs the Kodiak Island spaceport.

The ordinance would. By Sept. 1 each year, exempt owners would have to give the assessor the name and contact information of every entity or private leaseholder using their land, with a copy of the lease or agreement.

Gardner and Smiley's original request in September would have put that duty on the private leaseholders. At an Oct. 29 work session, Gardner said the conversation started with Alaska Aerospace but has since broadened.

Garoutte's staff report recommends introducing the ordinance but leaves its fiscal impact section blank. Neither the staff report nor the ordinance says how much revenue is at stake, what happens if an owner doesn't file or how the borough would enforce the rule against federal and state owners.

If the Assembly introduces it at its 6:30 pm meeting Thursday, the ordinance would go to a public hearing at the next regular meeting, which the borough calendar lists for Dec. 3. It would take effect once adopted.