What is in HB13, what passed is the most relevant component is the primary what's it called?

Primary place of abode, the primary home exemption.

A lot of the other stuff that's in there would still be applicable with our economic development tax exemption, and so it would be the same and/or better with what we already have.

So suffice it to say that the bulk of the conversation surrounded what does it look like from a primary home exemption perspective.

Do you exemp all of uh primary home?

Do you exempt a portion of it?

What does that look like?

Uh simply because the what the legislative text says, what the law says is that you can you can't exemple some or all of somebody's primary place of abode, and so on computers have a hard time firing up here.

So that was some of the conversation.

Uh what was stated at the time is uh if we're gonna not exemp all of it, perhaps a number that makes sense is to talk about how much how much of the tax is relevant to funding schools.

There is a mandatory minimum for schools of 2.65 mils.

Um so there was some conversation about what that looks like as it relates to a standard tax bill, and so long story short, we'll dive into some of that in more specific uh detail what it looks like for the primary home exemption.

There's a couple of other topics that we may or may not get to tonight, but I think are worth having on your mind so that we can discuss it again uh in two weeks.

Um we have the economic development tax exemption and what modifications or changes might be made to that and are worthwhile.

Um Mr.

Barnett came and mentioned of an expansion of rather than just the city core, it's all of the city limits.

Um so that's certainly something that you all can consider.

There is a portion of the economic development taxes exemption that we currently have that is specific to housing.

Uh we had a conversation with the housing subcommittee on that last night.

Um we didn't uh we didn't really dive into it too deeply, but we had the the beginnings of a conversation uh after sleeping on and talking with staff a little bit.

I think I think what we would potentially recommend when we get to that point is perhaps looking at removing that specific piece and just using some of the other levers that we have for housing incentive programs in lieu of that specific tax exemption for single dual unit uh homes, duplexes, and whatnot.

And so anyhow, long story short, uh I think there's there's a number of topics that are all relevant.

Uh there is a tangentip with the something that you could do if you want to increase or decrease cost of living, is if somebody were to get this primary home exemption, perhaps you take the money that you would be giving for the energy assistance and not give it to them, and you add to other areas of energy assistance so you could help other areas of housing and/or businesses.

That's not necessarily specific to the section of code related to taxes and tax exemptions, but I think they all play together into what can you do to make living in Valdez a little bit more affordable.

Um I guess before I go any further, I would defer to the housing subcommittee, uh, Councilmember Whitty, Devons, and Stitts.

If I missed anything or anything you want to add specifically to the general conversation.

No, I think you laid that out eloquently.

Um I think that we have a real opportunity here to make a generational impact for our town.

Um, and we're looking at every avenue that we can use to be most effective.

And so the housing subcommittee has been in great debate with staff and all of their amazing knowledge about code.

Um, so I'm really uh I was really excited about tonight's meeting.

So, what I think I'll do is uh without further ado, I'll plug in my laptop here.

Hopefully, you all can see this.

So the thought process was that I don't know if you can all see that very well or not, but the thought process was when it comes to the primary home exemption.

So the current primary home exemption is a separate section of state statute.

So you can leave it as it is and you can add this exemption on top of it because they're two different pieces of legislation.

And so our thought was let's continue to do that.

Um the thought was is that after all other exemptions, you would then take a percentage of the remaining taxable value that would be taxed.

Um to run some numbers and the average home, not how did we phrase this?

If you subtract the value of mobile homes, the average single family home price, taxable value is approximately three hundred and thirteen thousand dollars.

Assessed value, excuse me.

So if you plug that, if you plug that in here, as the average current resident, subtract 79,505, which is our current primary home exemption, uh, and then the next column over in the place of a senior, uh, you would subtract an additional 150,000.

It leaves with a tax bill for the current resident, again, an average current resident of about 46, 4700.

So somewhere between 4,000 and $7,000 a year is your average current tax bill for someone as a primary homeowner, right?

From there, I've got this primary place of abode square.

You can adjust this as whatever you want it to be.

So we ran some numbers, and depending on how you slice the pie, uh it would either be a 23% tax or a 13% tax.

Um that would fund the schools.

So if you take the uh required contribution, you would make this a 0.87 multiplier.

And so what that would do is you would take what is now a 4669 tax, would become a $607 annual tax.

So a monthly escrow payment of $390 becomes $50.60.

And that would put you at essentially our minimum required school contribution.

And and again, I want to say it's we've we've tied it to the school contribution as more of a symbolic gesture, and I don't want and I don't want to downplay it, but it could be any percentage you want it to be.

You guys have the ability to do that.

But the the conversation in the committee was every chef's some skin in the game, and if that skin in the game is symbolically or otherwise associated with funding schools, we're okay with that.

We do pay above the cap, and so if you were to do that, uh that number would then be a.77 for rounding purposes, and so what is a uh 46, 4700 annually is a thousand dollars annually.

Uh North Soap Borough Jake was just telling me did theirs and they did a hundred percent.

So you can you can do a hundred percent.

Um the reasoning that by separating them is I think if you want to tie it in the future to the energy assistance program, I think you could leave the principal residence exemption, and then if you receive the secondary primary place of a vote exemption, you would not be eligible for energy assistance.

Someone may not want to take that exemption, maybe would just want the the 7900 79,000 in order to get the uh 550,000 in a case of if you had a property that was worth less than equal to or less than 79,000, you're not really gaining much by getting the additional tax benefit.