R-11 in the attic leaves the wood making up the bottom chord of the roof truss exposed to ambient air temperatures which means that 15% of the ceiling is “insulated” at only the R-4 of the 2×4 and worse, since the interior sheet rock is tightly fastened to the ceiling heat is rapidly conducted out of the home.

In many even moderately old homes just repairing air infiltration problems could make a 15% improvement. For example if the weatherstrip at the bottom of an exterior door is worn out or torn away leaving 1/8 to 1/4 inch gap, across the typical 36″ door that adds to a hole in the door the size of a baseball……. or equivalent to leaving the door open 20 minutes a day. Repairing worn weatherstripping and caulking around all window and door trim, both inside and out can be done for very little cost and make a big difference.

Many of our commercial buildings have even more wasteful problems. Weatherization programs have not targeted them for the most part, and often there is the problem of the tenant paying the energy bills while the building owner would have to extend the capital to make the improvements.

It would be an interesting experiment to cross Enstar’s gas usage data with the borough’s square footage data to get a benchmark of average fuel usage/ft and perhaps notify those with buildings in the high consumption range.

At a later time, as we’ll all have to pay more if we require more energy and the infrastructure to deliver it, along with global warming concerns, building efficiency might become a part of our property tax formula.

In short, if we’re worried about the boat sinking let’s plug the holes!

However, in looking over your Compass piece a few things piqued my curiosity. The first is that of using 1980 as the base year for comparison. The early 80′s were good times for commercial R/E with low vacancies, strong rents and the resulting high tax valuations. But came 1984 with high vacancies, extremely low rents and a halving of building prices that were, frustratingly not reflected in tax valuations.

It’s taken all of the two decades since for rents and valuations to rebound and I doubt that Anchorage rents returned to inflation adjusted levels of 1980. Then what gains have been made are now in a period of electricity and gas having tripled with other utilities having increased rapidly as well. These factors all reduce the income approach of building, and thus taxation, valuations.

Next I reflected on the housing stock of 1980 with virtually none of the expensive homes of the hillside, south Anchorage and the Eagle River hills existing at the time. My guess is that the ration of home prices and quantity of homes have changed the ratio between commercial and residential over the decades, though the number of new hotel rooms may prove me wrong.

Something else has happened here. Anchorage too has participated in the home price bubble of the L-48. Fortunately not to the same degree and even more fortunately the deflation is taking place at a slower and more tolerable rate. But a deflation is taking place as a tour of the homes for sale will confirm with most listings being offered BELOW tax appraisal.

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeqrguz/housingbubble/

Lastly, I’ve a theory (ha! unproven) that while Anchorites are living in larger and more costly homes, due to technology changes they are doing more biz in less commercial space. These might range from the few “box” stores to the dozens of smaller less efficient stores of “the 80′s” to computers, faxes, cell phones allowing smaller offices to accomplish more to perhaps higher productivity in auto and other types of repair and maintenance facilities.

If my theory of doing more with less is true and the property taxes on buildings are not paying business’ way, (subjective, I suppose?) that buildings be categorized on what they do and the typical gross revenue, ie high grossing, high traffic “box” stores paying a higher rate than if the same building were used for a marginal biz like miniature golf etc.

Addressing the symptoms of a problem does not cure the problem. Alaska suffers greatly under a lack of private land. While we cannot get our land back from the Federal government, we could get the state to turn over what it has claimed. Increasing the amount of land available will decrease the price of land and housing. That will do more to aide us all than any number of welfare programs.

If Alaskans would have wanted to, they could have established universal health care instead of the Permanent Fund give-away program. Hawaii has health care for residents. But as the pipeline was being built, the Democrat majority was busy promising everybody everything. Then the legislature–in collaboration with Republican Gov. Jay Hammond–decided there needed to be some way to protect against spending every penny of Alaska’s oil bounty as soon as it became available. The Permanent Fund is the child of the legislature, and the legislature has the theoretical power to do what it wants to with it, but once the Jeannie was out of the bottle the legislature has been obligated by the voters to “protect” her.

Gov. Hammond and the Democrat majority in the legislature jumped on the Permanent Fund train for different reasons; Hammond to share the wealth directly, the Democrats because they thought it was going to be hauling money to pay for ever greater government services. They established the PFD program (which was approved as a constitutional ammendment in 1976), got rid of the income tax, put in the longevity bonus, and settled the Molly Hootch lawsuit with a consent decree that built new schools in villages all over the state, among other things. The first PFD checks were signed by Commissioner of Administration, Carole Burger, because Gov. Hammond wasn’t sure how the public would respond to getting government checks for doing nothing! Alaska is a different place today because of how oil development money was invested then.

Denali KidCare has been a fairly recent politically motivated program implemented by former Anchorage and state Mayor, Tony Knowles, to endear those who used to vote for Democrats but don’t anymore. As a general public policy matter, when Alaska was broke everybody was a Democrat and now that the state is richer than we ever could have imagined back then, Republicans rule. I predict there will now be extensive discussion about all manner of things we can spend our latest resource bonanza on as the appetite for spending by politicians has always been bigger than their stomachs–unless an alternative mechanism is established to keep them from it.

If this blog is really supposed to be “Alaska’s independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank” then how about some discussion about how our resource based economy should be stabalized? Is funding Denali KidCare a more valuable investment than paying for the retirement liabilities Alaska has assumed–as the result of so many teachers and public employees coming here long enough to qualify for retirement under TRS/PERS and then going elsewhere to live off their Alaskan Experience while continuing their careers? What about the Percent Of Market Value (POMV) concept endorsed by the Permanent Fund Board to protect the fund and stabalize payouts–does that have any resonance here?

I realize this isn’t Commonwealth North, but common guys!

Democratic Sen. Jim Duncan, (Sen. Elton’s Juneau predicessor) was the guy who got those “Retirement Incentive Program” bills passed to R-I-P off the state in the mid- to late-1990s. Alaska teachers with 20 years service–and perhaps University Faculty, too–have retired early to take their experience and ability elsewhere in favor of younger cheaper employees. Then some have come back because they have nothing better to do than work for the state or school district while simultaneously drawing retirement.

Hey, there’s your Denali KidCare money, ldw! Just tell Sen. Elton to go get it. But, forget about any help from Sen. Duncan– he now works as business manager for the largest union of state employees, ASEA/AFSCME Local 52.

Respectfully,
Donn Liston

So, no matter how much effort is put forth to provide access to the process for the people of Alaska, some are going to say it isn’t enough because their kind of “real power” is satisfied only by “the ability to stymie debate and therefore delay resolution of public policy…” yada, yada, yada. Those kind of folks probably don’t know how to communicate directly to their elected officials–except in some sarcastic way.

Sounds kind of anal to me, what do you think Kacy?

Respectfully,
Donn Liston