Kodiak Set Its Taxes — Now It Has to Send the Bills

Kodiak Island Borough has set its 2026 property taxes — now it just has to get the bills out the door, and that's the hard part.

The borough is mid-switch from an aging assessment system to new software from Tyler Technologies, a changeover that was supposed to wrap last fall and is still limping along in June. The state requires tax bills to go out by July 1, and whether the new system is ready to run them is genuinely uncertain.

An assembly member pressed on the delay at the June 4 meeting, noting the borough expected to be on Tyler by last September. Borough Manager Williams pointed to the system being replaced: "We have been on an antiquated system that has been limping along for years." Moving the data over, she said, "just was not that simple" — and losing IT staff who knew the old records made it worse. "You just perfect storm all of those things together and it's taking longer."

Williams said she doesn't think the borough chose wrong, just that "our conversion was a lot harder than what they're used to," and noted other Alaska communities have hit the same wall while many converted smoothly.

The saving grace is a backup. The borough has kept its old Harris system running in parallel the whole time, so if Tyler can't handle this year's billing, staff can fall back to it. "If Tyler doesn't work, we'll be trying to pull away from Tyler really fast," Williams said. The coming weeks will decide which system actually sends Kodiak its tax bills.