The proposed property tax break to encourage new downtown housing sounds great, if you happen to be a developer or the prospective buyer of one of the million-dollar apartments Nick Mystrom plans to build and sell. As usual, the probable recipients of the municipality’s generosity will be those who already nurse seven-digit bank balances.
The young and working class people that the project purports to serve are unlikely to be able to afford the new housing. And as the cost of running the city steadily increases during the next decade, those who reside in the non-central areas will shoulder the new tax burden needed to keep it running, including the share that the downtown developers and luxury apartment owners are relieved of due to their 10- to 12-year tax forgiveness.
If we must insist on further crowding the downtown area, let the developers pay their own freight just as average citizens must do. They can afford it, or they wouldn’t be in the business. Otherwise, if this proposal works out as well as the tax credits for oil companies did, the municipality may end up paying these developers to build their golden towers.
— Don Neal
Anchorage
Have something on your mind? Send to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Letters under 200 words have the best chance of being published. Writers should disclose any personal or professional connections with the subjects of their letters. Letters are edited for accuracy, clarity and length.