MEMORANDUM

TO: Pete Sprague, Assembly President

Members, Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly

THRU: Dale Bagley, Mayor

FROM: Shane Horan, Director of Assessing

DATE: January 9, 2003

SUBJECT: Ordinance 2003-02, providing the acceptance of a late-filed senior citizens and disabled veterans exemption applications be no more than three years after the original deadline for filing the application.

AS 29.45.030 (f) was revised with an effective date of January 1, 2002 establishing that the governing body of a municipality for good cause shown has the authority to waive the deadline of January 15 for filing senior citizen and disabled veteran exemptions for any year. To date the assembly has authorized the assessor to accept (60) sixty senior citizen and (8) eight disabled veteran late-filed applications as if timely filed. If a failure to timely file has been waived and the application for exemption is approved, the amount of tax that the claimant has already paid shall be refunded to the claimant. The assessing department received three late-filed applications for the senior citizen and disabled veteran exemption from property taxes covering several years, and the assembly approved these on December 10, 2002 under Resolution 2002-148.

The assessor believes it is reasonable to limit approval of the late filings to three years to avoid creating a significant expenditure in borough refunds over an unlimited number of years. In addition, accepting late filings that are more than three years old would necessitate a significant expenditure of assessing department staff time. Staff would be required to retrieve archived assessment records and recreate and recalculate partially exempted or taxable property values. Taxability appeals could potentially be forthcoming in the event there were occupancy changes or disputes made by the applicant during those years for which the exemption is approved.