Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re Board of Equalization annual report and 2026 assessment & appeals cycle

Let's go ahead and get started.

So this is—. Today is Thursday, October 8th. This is a work session on the Board of Equalization, both just in really a check-in on our property appeals process for this year. We know that's been a big topic earlier in the year, and so we don't have a legislative item before us. We do have the annual report, which is a draft at this point that we will see on our agenda in the near future from our chair.

Of the Board of Equalization. So we'll start with member introductions and we'll move into our business. Zach Johnson. Anna Brawley. And I know we have a couple other members floating around.

We might have some folks join us on the phone. And then we're also joined in the room by Assembly Counsel, Clerk's Office, Legislative Services, our presenters from Board of Equalization and the Municipal Assessor, as well as a couple of our other BOE members. And I'll say for those members, you are welcome to come up to the table at some point if you would like to share thoughts on this as well. So just that the opportunity is there. So with that, I'm going to turn to our presenters.

So I don't know if Mr. Moore or Mr. Gedimis is going to start, but either one, please proceed. Thank you. Yeah, with probably— so yeah, Jack Gedimis here, Ms. Bulthouse. So yeah, I don't have any specific materials, so I'll hand it off to Mr. Moore. Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Moore.

Hi, I'm here mostly to answer questions, but I guess I'll walk you through the report that we've put together. And I apologize that it was kind of last minute that we've gotten to this. We're still in the process of hearing appeals. Um, so far there were 1,990 appeals that were filed in 2026, and we've currently heard all but 5 of them, or we've resolved all but 5 of them. Um, so I'll just briefly kind of walk through the high points in the report, and then I'm happy to answer your questions.

So as I said, in 2026 there were 1,990 appeals filed. Which is a very significant increase from previous years. In 2025, there are 455. In 2024, there are 311. 2023, There are 218.

And so it's a trend towards a lot more appeals. Of those 1,990 appeals, 92% of them were resolved by the assessor's office or withdrawn by the appellants and didn't actually go to the Board of Equalization. And that ratio is a bit higher than previous years. I think last year we had 85%. We always have a lot of the appeals get resolved, and I think that this year Property Appraisal tried extra hard to not have them go to hearings.

So of the, um, those appeals, 163 were heard by the Board of Equalization, and that's a lot more than in previous years. Also, we had 66 last year, 43 the year before that. Um, and of the appeals we heard, the board changed the value in only 12% of them. And that seems like a small number, but in reality, by the time appeals get to the board, they've already been screened by property appraisal. And so these are the appeals that property appraisal thinks don't have a strong case.

And that 12% was actually more than last year. Last year, the board only, only changed value of 6 6% of the appeals.

An ongoing issue that we've had year to year is appellants failing to show up for hearings. This year we had 51 appellants that didn't show up for their hearing, and that's 31% of the appeals. Last year we had even more, it was around 40%. It was something that we were concerned about. It's an issue that nobody is served well.

The appellant loses their appeal deposit, the hearing isn't as productive, There's a feeling of it wasting people's time. And last year we made changes to the notification process to get an automated phone call, and I think that that helped a little bit, but this is still an ongoing problem and something that we should work to resolve.

And also note we were joined on the phone by Ms. Silvers at 11:54.

So on the next page in the report, we'll skip through a lot of this, and there, if you're interested in statistics, I've got a lot of numbers here. It's a lot to wade in, in the short term. But just looking at the change in valuation, we did a comparison between the value of properties in February and the valuation that had been assigned at the end of September and found that Overall, there was a net decrease in valuations of $185 million through the appeals, which is 16% of the appealed property properties. And that, if you average that over all the appeals, that's almost $100,000 per appeal that the valuation was reduced by.

So for the board, and that includes not just the board's decisions, but but all of the changes made by Property Appraisal. For the board's hearing on appeals that we heard, the 163 appeals were heard over 102 sessions between April and October. That's averaging fewer than 2 appeals per session, which is very disappointing. So an efficient schedule would have averaged 4 or more appeals per session. And we could have heard all of those 163 appeals in 41 sessions, which could have been done in a month.

But instead, we had a season that was spread over 6 months. And the, the reality is even more troubling in that we had almost 250 appeal sessions scheduled, and the vast majority of them got canceled before actually being heard. And so we had board members had to be lined up and on their schedule for 250 sessions. We had 102 sessions. This ideally could have been done in 40 sessions.

On the next page in the report, I've got a list of the number of sessions that were heard by each board member, and the number varies dramatically, and that's mostly just due to availability of people over the course of the season. Some— we had a bunch of new board members, and some realized early on that it was way more of a time commitment than they thought they'd signed up for. And so a few of these people didn't serve on very many, but some people really stepped up and did a huge number of appeals. Um, we've had a number of people that have decided that they're not going to be able to continue with us, and so we request the Assembly continue to recruit for more members for next year.

And then at the end of the report, I've got, um, a lot of comments and recommendations, and I can talk through them, or if people want to ask questions on statistics first, I'm happy to answer questions. Okay, yeah, I'll pause there and see if there's questions from members in the meantime. Okay, sounds like waiting until the end. And I'll just note again, see, we have a couple more of our Board of Equalization members in the audience, so I will note you are not required to speak. We are happy to have you up here if you would like to offer additional thoughts at some point, or if folks have questions, might call you up.

So thank you for being here. Thank you for your service. Okay, I think no questions at this moment, so we can keep going. Okay, so I will— I'll go through the, the rest of the comments and recommendations that included in the report. And this is something that municipal code solicits from the Board of Equalization and the chair in the reports.

And so these are my opinion as chair, mostly And I'm happy to respond to questions to any of this. And so I think my basic framing is that Anchorage has a trust problem in relation to the property appraisals. And that's evidenced clearly by the huge number of appeals that we had in 2026. I think the problem was undoubtedly exacerbated by the lack of explanation that we had. And I think that Ideally, better messaging in future years would help alleviate that problem if we could clearly explain what happened and that it was a response to problems in previous years that resulted in values being changed.

But I think that that wasn't explained clearly enough, and the lack of trust resulted in a huge number of appeals.

Another—.

Issue that I want to bring up is that the appeals process through the Board of Equalization fails to address undervaluations. And through the appeals process, people can only appeal their own property value and not the value of any other property. And so despite our ability to hopefully offer corrections or lead to corrections in, in overvaluations, which are the ones that people are are interested in appealing, the appeals process isn't an effective mechanism for addressing undervaluations.

I think that if we, um, look at what happened over the course of the appeal season, that we should expect even more appeals next year. And I think that that's going to be concerning to a lot of people, and I'll explain why I think that. And it may not end up being true, but if we look at the appeals out of the almost 2,000 appeals, the vast majority of them had their value lowered dramatically. And this is despite the fact that in our opinion, after reviewing lots of the evidence packets, very few of the property owners had good evidence to show a change in value. But the property appraisal was interested in having them not go to the Board of Equalization, in assuaging people's concerns.

And so values were lowered on the vast majority of the appeals. An average of nearly $100,000. And most of that was through adjustments to some of the subjective parameters. I think there's a parameter called grade factor that was altered on more than half of every appeal, every property appealed. At the same time, there are other similar properties that weren't appealed in 2026, and those, um, profiling weren't changed.

And I would think that intelligent landowners would, would realize that their properties were going to be overvalued compared to their neighbors and would want to appeal next year.

I have notes here about the potential for a double standard between residential and commercial properties. I can let you read through that, but I think that that's been a concern of people in a hearing this year, we had that issue brought up by one of the property appraisal staff who told us that internally they make a choice to, to not have dramatic changes in commercial property valuations, although that does happen in residential valuations.

So in, in conclusion, I, I think that more needs to be done to to build trust. And that one step always is having better transparency. And if we could provide, um, publish the full details of the, this black box, um, computer model that's used to do the evaluations, I think that that would be a step. But even that, I think, is going to be difficult for most residents to interpret and respond to. And I think that ideally, some sort of external audit that would go through and have an independent review of the mass appraisal system that we use and that could convince people that either changes would be made to improve it or that it was really good the way it was, I think would be a huge step towards building trust.

And at the end of the report, I have a number of bullet points that we can go through if you'd like. They are just potential areas that we could talk about changes. But I'm happy to answer questions first. I know I put a lot out there. Okay, thank you.

And I'll note we were joined in person by Member Handeland a few minutes ago. So I'll see, I think first in the queue for questions I had Mr. Johnson. Oh, okay, never mind. Not for right now. I think if you could maybe walk through the recommendations a little bit, and then I have I guess a few broad questions and I'll ask the assessor to respond to those as well.

Okay. So I, I guess not knowing exactly what we were trying to get done today, I don't have specific code changes that I'm proposing, but these are areas that I'm hoping that the assembly can weigh in on and offer suggestions. And the first bullet point that I have is in reducing the number of no-shows to appeal hearings. This is something that was a big issue last year. I feel like we've made a little bit of progress, but it's still an ongoing problem.

And improved notifications, I think, is one step. Right now, to encourage people to show up, we have an appeal deposit that every person filing an appeal has to place, and that, that's the intention there is that they'll lose their money if they don't show up for the hearing, and so it's an incentive. We could think about increasing the appeal deposit or somehow changing the framework around that. Um, and I, I guess I'm looking for ideas from the Assembly on, on what could happen there.

The second bullet that I have is, um, providing improved messaging to appellants to ensure that they have access to the evidence packet before their hearing. We had quite a few appellants showing up for hearings who hadn't looked at or seen the evidence packet. And this is something that is prepared by Property Appraisal a week before each hearing and is posted online. And the goal is that appellants should find that online and read through it. I think a lot of people weren't getting the message that it was there or didn't have the tools to, to get to it online.

And so they're showing up for hearings unprepared, and it's just a less productive hearing. If the appellant's not prepared to talk about the evidence.

The third is the point that I brought up earlier about the efficient scheduling of appeals into our hearing calendar, and I think especially to ensure that multiple appeals are heard in every hearing session. So we have a panel of 3 BOE volunteers that has to be there for every hearing, and these are typically in person involving people driving into City Hall. If we can only resolve one appeal, then the, the labor hours per appeal is high compared to if we can resolve 4 appeals in a session. And this is something I don't know what the assembly can do about it, but I think that it's something the municipality needs to work towards, um, figuring out a way that we can efficiently schedule appeals into hearings.

And then the last points that I have are regarding transparency and the potential for an audit. And right now the municipality does publish a lot of the inputs to their cost model, but not all of them. And there's, um, there are whole sections of it that aren't published and appellants have no ability to, to get to and respond to, including the the sales information that's used for the cost records, the actual cost data that's used to build up their cost model, the regression statistics, and the resulting adjustments. And so I think the more of that that we can make publicly available, the more trust we'll build in the system.

And audit, to have somebody independently review those numbers and convince residents that we're doing a good job, I think would undoubtedly be the biggest step towards building trust. And finally, if we can improve the resources for appellants to, to make effective appeals and to use the process effectively, I think that would be a desirable outcome too.

Okay, thanks so much for walking us through the report. I'll just note for context as well, this is a code requirement to submit a report. And so, and I know this one is an almost done draft, I imagine, but folks can expect to see that on a future meeting. And I will note that earlier this year, I actually, well, maybe I'm saying more about myself than anything. I enjoyed going through prior reports because it was helpful to understand kind of the historical background.

For example, in the early, it was the late '90s, early 2000s, we didn't have a lot of processes codified or clear. And so there was a really basically a big mess that needed to be cleaned up. And so there was almost 3,000 appeals at that point. So it kind of put in perspective what we were dealing with this year. Of course, it also— there were many reports that talked about kind of a more routine operation.

So, so I appreciate the detail in here and the thoughtful considerations based on your experience. And again, thank you to your service and to everybody on the Board of Equalization. We know this has been a challenging year and it's a challenging role to fill, period. So I wanted to— since we don't have anybody in the queue right now, I wanted to give the assessor an opportunity opportunity to kind of respond or to reflect on some of these as well. As well as if I know most— because most of the appeals don't go to the board, then you, your office actually had a large volume of items to address as well.

Um, and then I also see we have a couple board members coming up, so we can ask them to speak. But I just want to highlight some themes, and then I'll turn to Mr. Gadamas. Um, I heard in terms of recommendations and, uh, kind of themes, uh, that the— there was the— almost all of the appeals were reducing valuations. So I'm just kind benchmarking some things to pull out from here. So a lot of reduced valuations on appeal.

I know there was a state law change that really constrained the ability to, to change values upwards. I think it only goes downwards, so I'll note that as well. I know we had methodology changes to how our assessments are done, so we had a lot of discussion about that early in the year. And then I heard kind of two general themes. One is around improving trust in the assessment process and people's, you know, that people feel like that they're getting a fair deal from that.

And then some operations and scheduling improvements. Those were kind of two of the broad themes. So, and I also see we have three of our board members up here, so I'll ask Mr. Gadames to offer some reflections and then I'll turn to some board members as well for your thoughts.

Yeah, thank you. So a couple of things. So I think the first one is when we're looking at the reduced value for everything. So this year— every year we look at this and we actually have to estimate what we think that the total value is going to be for a loss. This year we were at the high end, but it was not— it was within a range that we would expect.

So from, from the respect of reduced value, it was probably not an anomaly this year. One thing maybe is that just the number of appeals we had made that magnitude significantly— made it larger within that regard. So I think the other thing too, to just make note for everybody, is the appeal process, it is self-selecting. So when you look at something like a reduction, that's, you know, I think it was on— it's about roughly on average about 13%. I think Mr. Moore mentioned about 16% for a net reduction between the two, but Again, I just want to highlight that this is a self-selecting group, and typically when we look at that, it— that we did see this year was tough.

It was really tough on my staff to, to try to do it. It was, you know, I forget the magnitude as far as how many more appeals we had from a magnitude perspective than last year, but it was up significantly. Obviously that did that did the methodology that we did. We're looking at those standards. We did have that work session earlier this year that did, you know, really bring on the appeals this year from that.

So from the methodology standpoint, you know, we did try to, to the best we could, explain to the public and everything, but it is a complicated process when you look at it. You know, we are— it is mass appraisal, so we're trying to put properties in groups as best we can and then to value them in those groups accordingly. So when it comes to the trust and everything, I would say that overall what I've heard from various folks, whether it was comments from the ombudsman, the CFO, the public, whoever it is, overall we had really good positive feedback from folks. I know that we're always going to have a few negative, you know, or a few property owners that might be concerned. But generally speaking, I'm really proud of my staff for how they did it, especially given the volume that we had this year from that.

So I think in some ways, yes, you know, there's always a room to grow to build public trust, but I also think we can look at this as a, as a success this year with building that trust with the folks as well. And then as far as like the schedules go for everything, that'd be probably something more that I was not involved with as much. I think that was more with our legal team from that, specifically Mr. Bowman was one person that was working on that. And I think, is he coming up to maybe, if he's able to speak to that at all?

Yeah, please, you're welcome to come up. Don't sit here. Like, yeah, you can share my mic from there. So yeah, Mr. Roman, if you want to offer some thoughts on that, and then I'll turn to the board members. Thank you.

And to be clear on my role, we had 3 different attorneys that were assigned to this project this year. I typically was assisting the department. Kate Buehrer was typically assisting the Board of Equalization, with Jason Bach instead backing her up. In preparation for this, conferred with all of them. They're not able to be with us today, so these are kind of the statements from the Law Department writ large representing both sides of this process and advising on both sides.

And sorry, one second, um, Mr. Davis, do you mind turning off your microphone? I can hear an echo and I think folks on the phone— it's okay. Yeah, please go ahead. Uh, so a lot of challenges that the board faced this year were actually a result of some process requirements slash improvements that were imposed by law when we were looking at the process in general, we had some due process concerns that we helped the department work forward. So the beginning of the year, there was a meeting between the board and the Property Appraisal Department to figure out how we would schedule this year's excessive undertaking, because we knew it was bigger than average year.

And we set out a process for scheduling that the board would determine blocks of time when they would have members who could field a panel, and they would pass that to the department. The department would then wrangle their— the assessors to provide their part of the appeal process and also would be in charge of notifying the appellants of your hearing is scheduled for this time and handling the appellant side of rescheduling. And this is somewhat where law got involved. The notice that went out to appellants, we insisted be at least 2 weeks out from the hearing date, and that what often happened was that an appellant receiving that notice or within that last 2 weeks before their hearing would then withdraw their— they'd resolve or withdraw their appeal. Law insisted that we couldn't backfill those with people who hadn't received the full 2 weeks' notice.

Similarly, we couldn't shift people's hearing dates around fluidly. Similarly, um, appellants have, for due process reasons, the ability to withdraw their appeal up to basically the minute before the Board of Equalization hearing occurs, and we did have people doing that. Literally 10 minutes before the Board of Equalization, they withdraw. That means that they get their, you know, there's a no-show at the board and there's no way to backfill.

Appellants, if given enough time, we could have people waive their 2-week rescheduling rights, but that has to be an affirmative waiver received by the department with enough advance notice to get them scheduled into those back slots. So some of the No-shows at appeal hearings, that's an appellant's right. There's no way to force them to do that. The current bond was put in place by the Assembly to reduce the historical number of no-shows. So while it is very frustrating to the board and I and the department that we have this high prevalence of no-shows, it is the right of any appellant to have their appeal heard written on written testimony alone.

And we can build more of a stick, like the bond, into this, but we can't force anyone to show up. And it would be improper for us to not provide appellants adequate notice to prepare their case and be at these hearings to backfill some of those slots or gaps in the appellees.

I think that's addressed most of the questions that I can assist with. Okay, thank you. I don't see anyone in the queue at this moment, so I will turn to our board members. I'm going to start with Ms. Flynn at the end and work down the line. Thank you.

So whatever comments you'd like to offer, your experience— I know you in particular have served for a number of years on this board in other roles, but happy to hear anyone's thoughts on your experience and ways that we can do this better. Better. Well, let's leave aside the experience in the '80s. That was a long time ago. I went back and looked at a couple of my files, and except for a year I took a— I took a year off, I think I started in the current queue in 2019.

And a couple of things that have been mentioned, but I want to— the mass appraisal model is not well understood by the people who are out there potentially appealing. So that's one issue. There were some system changes this year which frankly were good. They tended to work by area and neighborhood as opposed to all over the city, and that made comps a whole lot better. There were exceptions to that.

If you had a house built in Muldoon in 1950, the only comp you're going to find is in Spenard. And sometimes appellants get confused as to why my property is there and yet you're talking about it over here. I want to look at kind of two particular areas, one administrative and one professional. And I tend to deal with paper rather than computers, although I did a lot of them on computer. I like to have a printed copy in front of me, so I have a tendency to go to the third floor and get I get a copy of what's being appealed so I can make my notes all over it.

I'm also in there when taxes are being collected. I just want to say the staff on the third floor are amazing. They're polite, they're professional, they are respectful. They are— if this was a private business, I'd say please give them an extra day off or a bonus. And I want to particularly note that Cassie, who has done most of the scheduling and frankly takes most of the grief for the schedules that go astray, she needs special commendation for the work that she does.

Do give her an extra day off. So let me just move to the professional staff, uh, and over the years I guess I recognize them. I can't tell you necessarily who they all are, but they are remarkable. And yes, they had an awful lot of work to do this year. And once again, very respectful, very professional, and really went the extra mile.

I had somebody stop me about a month ago, somebody who had— this one happened to be a commercial appeal— and said to me, I can't believe how good they are. They called me on Saturday to ask for additional information so that they they could resolve my appeal.

Yes, I know they worked not just 8 to 5, they worked 5, 6 days a week, no breaks. They need some time off too and extra compensation. They—. And just to how many of them got resolved, everybody has a different reason, but it kind of starts out with you know, a big blast that goes out in the newspaper that says, oh my God, there are almost 2,000 appeals. So that gets attention.

And some of the attention I got— I think they got— was very unprofessional. I noted this on the record during one of the hearings, that there was a real estate agent in town that literally went out and solicited appeals and then never filed them. That person ought to lose their license, but that's another issue. But the other thing is, if you look at withdrawals, I think a lot of them— and this is just my personal opinion— is you file an appeal and you talk to the staff. And I don't think the staff said this, but here's the question: would you sell your house for that price?

And if the answer is no, a lot were withdrawn just because of that.

And a lot of the evidence, the evidence that was given by both the appellant and the staff, led to very logical and thoughtful conclusions.

Um, all I can say is good job. Um, yes, we can do some tweaks.

There was one other.

A couple of appellants said when they filed their appeal, they had to give certain— legal will have to help me with this— certain information that they didn't want public even, but the state law requires it to be public. So the staff was between a rock and a hard place, and that, that created a problem, and I'll I think Mark June said, go talk to your legislator. I think that was his response. Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you. Um, next we have Mr. June, if you'd like to share some thoughts as well. Oh, and please make sure your microphone's on. Just press the button, it'll turn green, uh, the bottom. Yeah, there you go.

Thank you. Good, good. Thank you, Ms. Crowley. Um, my name is Mark June. I'm currently the co-chair of the Board of Equalization.

This is my second term on the board. I think I've had about 5 years of service. Of course, I'm cognizant of the first year volunteering, which is volunteers are not management. We're here to do what we're told. We're not here to second-guess the procedures in place.

I don't pretend to know the internal staff processes. It is very much a black box to me for reasons that I never understood. I was tasked at the middle of the season with being the person responsible for finding substitutes. It was a lot of groveling. I heard here for the first time— I never understood the 2-week appeal process.

I heard here for the first time that that was an internal decision, not based on ordinance.

And that is something that I have, being a lawyer by profession, always found disturbing and find it to be arbitrary.

The—. I have 4 points to make.

In terms of— make that 5 points. When I first started working, the Board of Equalization was viewed as the rubber stamp of the assessor's office, with the boards being assigned somehow internally by staff— whether this was true or not is beside the point— to support the assessor's office. And I think that's changed for the better thanks to Mr. Moore Moore's computer program providing for random assignments of persons and a system of alternates, which are also randomly assigned. And that was a difficult system to put in place. And I think that Mr. Moore's efforts should be acknowledged with gratitude.

My points are The length of the session and the number of appeals, rightly or wrongly, is not a good look and should be addressed. I would note that as the sessions went on, it became harder and harder to find substitutes, particularly in the last few weeks. My hat is tipped to Theresa Hillhouse and Chris Kolarik who were the ironmen— ironpersons, excuse me— on the Board of Equalization, who had the most appeals and were most— the most ready to step up. And but again, the length of the session, the number of appeals is not a good look and should somehow be addressed. There's an issue is productivity.

When you look at a schedule and you see a number of sessions that are canceled in their entirety, or greatly reduced, that is not a good look. What you have is excess capacity there that, in my humble opinion as an uninformed volunteer, should be addressed.

The third question I have is, does an appeal whether it goes to hearing or not, result in an automatic discount by talking to the assessor's office. And this is the informal scuttlebutt that, that we hear. And if that is the case, then those that don't appeal, those that accept the assessor's judgment, judgment, are being treated unfairly because— and I think this is important to remember whether it is an exemption for military service, whether it's an exemption, uh, for residency, whether it is an exemption, uh, for religious backslash charity purposes, the underlying text of that appeal is that someone says we should pay less in property taxes so that others can pay more, because it's one big balloon and what you're trying to find is the denominator to set the mill rate, uh, and if the people that don't appeal, the people that accept their fate, um, without question are shortchanged, that is not right and that is something that should be looked into is what is the percentage of of reductions because what happens is the no-shows are partly due to the reductions and the people that show up, it's like, my reduction wasn't good enough, I want more. And you're kind of sitting there looking at them kind of going, wow, you came here to argue for a final $10,000 reduction in your property value. Uh, what's— there's a question that goes, what's wrong with this picture, which is independent of the evidence provided.

You know, that's not our job to question that. Again, we're just volunteers.

And then the last thing that I had is, is the number of appeals this year an anomaly, and next year can we expect expect less. The expect less argument would be supported by people who are more familiar with the process that was put in place for the first time this year. The, but the counterweight is the people that hear from the appeals this year that you should appeal because you'll at least get a discount if you talk to the assessors, and you, if that's not good enough, you might get a discount by going through the appeal rate. And you can always opt out for a nominal fee, the non-refund of your appellate fee, and that's something that should be looked at. And again, I'm just identifying things that in my mind are not a good look.

I go back to the bedrock principle that volunteers are not management.

And that's, that's all I have.

Thank you. And then we have one more board member at the table. So, Ms. Motika, please go ahead. Hi, my name is Jen Motika, and this is my first term on the Board of Equalization and my first term on any of the boards or commissions for the municipality. So I'd just like to speak anecdotally about my experience and give you all some perspective of a newbie.

So training was solid. We were given a big workbook and a lot of information within it. However, coming into my first hearing and hearing someone go on record, and you all as Assembly, maybe this is your experience your first time too, you go, "Oh wait, now everything I say is on record and lives in perpetuity," right? Like my whole body clenched a little bit. And so I think if there's an opportunity to give new board members the experience of like a role-played hearing so that they're familiar with, here's how, you know, this is the first thing that is read and here's where you get to speak and, and here's what you're looking for.

I was so grateful for all the attorneys that were serving on the board so I could hear how they presented their evidence for the decisions either way. And if we're asking everyday citizens to join these boards and committees, then I think it's important that we empower them so that when they step into those roles that they're prepared. I will say, once I kind of got the hang on it and learned some of the verbiage and everything like that, I was very impressed with the tax assessor's office and their ability to reconcile a lot of these appeals before they ever made it to our, our space. Second thing, as a parent, as these cases drew over time, I think we were told originally they would wrap up in July, and then it was like, okay, here's some more, here's some more, here's some more. And like we said, we're all still hearing a few cases.

It did become difficult to drive all the way in. I'm on South Side, drive all the way into City Hall to hear one case where the appellant might not even be there, and then race back to South Side, grab my daughter, and take her to school. And so for me, it became easier to join in virtually. Now, for me, on the other end, thinking about the appellant's experience, if I'm walking in a room and there's one person present, two board members, one or two board members online, the visuals are, do these people really care or are they just a rubber stamp? And so it was a difficult decision for me because I always choose to be in person when possible.

But the fact that I was coming in for these cases where appellants were not consistently, I mean, this was several weeks in a row where every single case there would be a no-show appellant. And unfortunately, I knew a few of those people and had to state so on the record.

But thinking about the term of that and the decisions and what we're offering for the volunteers, for the appellants, throughout this process. That's just my experience.

Yeah, overall, I would say I would— I'm grateful to be here. I encourage others to get involved. But I think overall for the Assembly, if we can figure out ways to make boards and commissions more appealing and appetizing to the general public and giving them good experiences from the get-go, That's what I'd really like to see. So thank you.

Thank you. So turn to members' questions, comments. I know you wanted to be in the queue at the end, Mr. Johnson. Go ahead. Yeah, I guess first, just thank you to those of you on the BOE for showing up and continuing to show up.

Like, that is a damn hard job, and you have to be pretty devoted to public service in this community to keep doing it. Thank you guys. And I think your feedback is well received. I think one of the challenges that I think is outside of your control, our control, or perhaps the assessor's office, is just I find there's this, you know, a lot of folks in the community, those especially those who bought their house 10, 20 years ago, just do not understand how much the market has changed. I mean, I would have people reach out to me, I can't believe you think this is a million-dollar house.

I find a house two doors down for sale, you know, it's very comparable, like, well, it is in fact a million-dollar house. Like, it's just that, that is how things have changed. And then, you know, we— I think a lot of people are still waking up to that fact, and that presents challenges for, for all of us across a multitude of problems that we're dealing with. Um, so thank you for that. I, I know that, you know, we, we had a series of changes implemented this year, you know, some which were dictated to us by the state and created some particularly challenging circumstances.

So I think my actual question would be to Mr. Gadames, and also a huge thank you to you and your staff. Like, you guys are really caught in the crossfire of all of this, and, and your commitment to this community is appreciated. I know it was a tough year, so just know that we, we respect what you do. But as we look ahead to 2027, are we expecting other significant updates to the methodology, or is it going to be more the status quo, how prepared should we be for disruptions next year? Yeah, through the chair too, Johnson.

So thank you. Thank you for the comments both to the board and towards my— towards Property Appraisal Division. So yes, I think it's a hard year for everyone for that. So 2026, we did have, as you know, the big changes. One of the things that maybe I want to highlight too, especially with one of the goals of like transparency, and also hearing about, you know, this being— the mass appraisal system being a black box, so to speak.

One of the goals that we're trying— that we tried to do this last year is to simplify things and to make it more simplified for an average property owner to follow along with that process. And we are continually looking to do that and find ways. When we look to 2027 for the assessment year, There's a couple of things that we're looking to do, but they're going to be nothing near the magnitude of what we did this past year for that. So we're going to continue to review the quality of construction. That was something that we looked at early on.

If you recall, we submitted the report in— I forget what month it was, but we submitted the report for that. So we're going to continue to look at that quality of construction. We're going to look at the style by, by property as well for that. And we are also going to look and review— if you recall, we had a lot of market areas. We reduced those, we consolidated those significantly to get better and compliant with standards.

It was great to hear, I think it was from Flynn, to, to see that our comparable sheets or comp sheets basically were, were generally improved. That was one of our goals for that. So, um, we are looking at potentially making some small tweaks to that as well. But generally speaking, I think this year when it comes to the actual valuation changes, it's gonna be, it's gonna be very, uh, it's not gonna be, uh, anywhere it was last year. So hopefully that answers your question.

That helps. I guess one last question is some members highlighted that there's information the state requires appellants to disclose that they would prefer not to. Through the chair, I believe what was referred to was the fact that the best data for property valuation is sales data, which is not required disclosure within the state of Alaska. And one of the number one asks I'm speaking for Jack's team here. Um, he can correct me if I say it's wrong, but one of the first things that property appraisers will ask for with an appellant is, do you have market sales data to support your appeal?

And, uh, some of them are willing to turn it over. Some of them are not. Some of them want to turn it over confidentially, which we are not able to say this will be held in confidence because of state open records laws. Um, And so I think— is that what we were talking about? Yes, exactly.

Can I jump in there? There is one section of code that speaks directly to commercial properties, and I believe it's specifically with income. So if a commercial property comes in and says, I want to appeal my property and I want to give you— I'm going to show you that it's whatever reason that's incorrect value, here's some income data, they can request to have that disclosed, but that's really the only section that I'm aware of. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah, thanks for sharing that.

That certainly was part of what I tried to communicate to people who are raising these concerns, is say that there's some trade-offs we have to accept when we say we want to live in a non-disclosure state. So understand that that's going to affect the accuracy of our estimates.

Could I add one thing to that? Yes, please go ahead. Non-disclosure is one thing. Documents that come based upon a loan you got from a bank says a whole lot about what the real value is and what the real sales is, and appellants need to understand that.

Mr. June, um, I would also add with respect to the non-disclosure issue, uh, that it is one thing to require disclosure of the values other than the property owner. If it's natural to ask the property owner, well, how much did you buy the house for? And they will say on occasion, well, I don't have to give you that. Under our procedures, if you don't give that evidence, the inference is against you. The evidence is to be viewed in the light of the assessor's office.

And so that doesn't become an issue with property owners. They get a second chance to disclose at the hearing, and if they don't, the chips fall where they may.

Thank you. And I see, so we're getting closer to time. I see we have another board member, Mr. Kolarak, if you'd like to come up. Yeah, it looks like you can take the seat here, or you guys can swap out. And then I'll note I also have Mr. Handlin in the queue at the end, so.

So please go ahead. Thank you. I'm Chris Kolarak. I'm—. This is my first year on the Board of Equalization.

Just to share anecdotally, when I bought my first house in 2017, we didn't even bother looking at the municipal assessment because the delta between what the assessor's office listed and the actual market price was huge. It was essentially a useless document. This year in particular, that delta was much, much smaller. And I think the vast majority of homeowners in Anchorage were so used to having a fake assessment for the sake of not having appeals and a drawn-out process that their knee-jerk reaction was to appeal. And that gets to some of the education that is needed here, because truthfully, would you buy your house for that?

Is market value. That's, that's the goal. And so I think having just understanding that and being able to apply that in the future would lead to a bit more of a smooth process.

Okay, you understand. Thank you. I really appreciate all that you guys do. I mean, when I heard that the number of appeals and that the assembly was potentially going to have to jump in there and have to do some of those. I was wondering as I was running for office whether I even wanted to do the job.

So I'm really glad that you guys did that. One of the things that kind of is very interesting to me is I think one of you brought up of, hey, would you buy, buy your, your house for this value? And kind of got me thinking of the story of the king of, I think, Denmark who, uh, as ships were coming into the port, he said, you can put whatever value on your goods and you pay the taxes. We're not going to inspect. You can do it.

But he had the right as the king to then purchase all the goods for that price. And so it'd be very interesting to sit there and have some kind of system like that where it's like, hey, tell us what you think your, your home is worth. We'll, uh, you can pay your taxes on that, but, uh, if it's too low, we'll, we'll buy it up there for that price. You're, you're obligated to sell. Mr.

Bowman wanted to respond. I anecdotally love the idea, but sadly Jack is bound by state law for a true and accurate value as of January 1st in any given year. So we can't just accept their number and then let the natural chips of how that plays out go for them. Sadly, it's a good idea though. There are a number of problems that would come from that, but yeah, just wishful thinking if I was, was King of Anchorage, maybe.

Thank you. Yeah, well, no, we do live in a representative democracy at this time, but I can't predict the future, nor can anyone else. So, so thank you again so much to our board members for your service, to our board chair for preparing this great annual report and thoughtful recommendations, to our staff. Certainly pass this along, Mr. Gadames, to— and Mr. Bowman as well, all the folks who were involved in making this It was certainly a difficult year, but it probably could have been a lot worse.

So thank you. And then I know just to mention this, the Board of Equalization is one of the few boards that the Assembly is directly responsible for recruiting. Most of our boards, the mayor selects appointments and then we confirm them. We— this is one of ours. And of course, if we do not have a Board of Equalization, the Assembly is the Board of Equalization.

So we are all very personally motivated to make sure you all are in your seats And so that's an ongoing thing. So I'll just note, sounds like we anticipate some vacancies on this board. Of course, the appeal season is done, but we will keep an eye on that and really encourage filling those seats well before the next appeal cycle. And, and I know that just to mention as well, the assessment process will happen in January, as we said, full and true value as of January 1st. And so I do imagine that we'll have another conversation about this early in 2027 and probably more focused on the front end of it, which is methodology, really digging into those questions of how we increase trust and transparency so folks can understand this process.

And of course, there's a lot of recommendations in here, so I will again point members to— if you're looking for things to work on, there's some good food for thought in this, as well as many other areas that we're working on. So with that, I think I don't have anyone else in the queue. We are at 12:45, so thank you again. Thanks for being here, and our next meeting will be our Governance Committee at 1:00 PM in this room. Thank you.

We are adjourned.