Anchorage Daily News

A foot-high stack of papers crammed with signatures landed in the city clerk's office Tuesday afternoon, paving the way for a ballot measure this April that could lower the taxes paid by individual property owners and more importantly, backers say, reduce the rate at which taxes increase.

The estimated 13,000 signatures petitioners dumped at City Hall on Tuesday handily surpassed the roughly 7,000 registered voters they needed in order to ask voters if they think the formula for calculating the city's tax cap needs a re-write.

"The Assembly and the mayor haven't had to make the hard choices with our money," said Bob Griffin, a co-sponsor of the petition. "Because the tax cap has been damaged and needs repair, they've fundamentally had a bottomless bag of money."

Officials estimate the initiative would reduce the amount of taxes that could be charged to property owners by about $5.5 million a year. Despite that, and the expected $17 million budget deficit already facing the city this year, almost all the best-known mayoral candidates have expressed support for the measure.

But acting Mayor Matt Claman, who announced an initial round of $7.3 million in budget cuts just last week, says he's not so sure.

"We hope there will be serious public debate regarding the merits of this proposal," Claman said in an e-mail. "I personally have questions about the initiative in light of the revenue challenges we are currently facing and over the potential loss of public services."

The cuts Claman announced last week included $2.5 million for the police department and more than $1 million for maintenance and operations. Ten city jobs will be axed and 50 vacant positions will remain unfilled.

The tax dispute has its roots in 2003, when the Assembly approved former Mayor Mark Begich's proposal to remove payments to the city from utilities and operations such as the Port of Anchorage and Merrill Field from the pool of revenues used to calculate the tax cap.

The result has been that taxes on individual property owners have risen precipitously, said Neil Nichols, a volunteer backing the petition. The number of signatures organizers collected in just 23 days shows people want a change, he said.

"People have had it," Nichols said. "They're sick of being hoodwinked."

The initiative would put payments made to general government by such enterprises back into the tax cap calculation, which would likely lower property tax bills.

City elections coordinator Guadalupe Marroquin said election workers will begin reviewing the signatures this week to ensure they belong to qualified voters. If they clear, the initiative will hit the polls on April 7.

Find James Halpin online at adn.com/contact/jhalpin or call him at 257-4589.

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