Board upholds assessor values across multiple Urege appeals after hearings on drainage and wetlands

The Kenai Peninsula Borough Board of Equalization on May 21 considered a set of related appeals from property owner David Urege and affiliated entities covering multiple parcels in the K-Beach/Bowie area and ultimately upheld the assessing department’s recommended values for each parcel presented.

Urege presented several appeals during the morning and afternoon sessions, arguing that repeated flooding since February 2013 and changes in drainage and subsidence had made land unusable for ranching and residential purposes. He told the board that areas he developed for hay and ranching have a much higher water table than historically recorded and that borough maps and decisions — and enforcement actions against his own mitigation work — had exacerbated the problem. "You're taxing me out of my property," Urege said during oral remarks, adding that the borough’s wetlands mappings and refusal to permit certain drainage work had harmed his ability to use and sell land.

Assessing staff — principally Joseph Nations and land appraiser Heather Windsor — explained the department’s methods: a market-adjusted cost approach for improvements and a land-value model calibrated to local market-area sales. Windsor described adjusting parcels for usable versus remaining (unusable) acres after an April 7, 2025 inspection and applying influences such as maintained/unmaintained access, limited view, electric/gas access and, where warranted by sales, an airpark influence. The department described specific acreage reclassifications on several parcels, reductions to land value where remaining/unusable acres were identified, and removal of septic-system values where documented failures existed.

The board considered multiple parcels together in sequence. Highlights of the formal outcomes: - Parcel 05518111 (David and Mary Jean Urege Qualified Personal Residence Trust): assessing department recommended value 813,600; motion to uphold carried 5–0. Findings noted that assessing had reduced value during the appeal process (removal of septic, land adjustments) but that the appellant had not shown an excessive valuation. - Parcel 05518112 (Hayground LLC — ~64.85 acres): assessing recommendation 184,000; board upheld 5–0 after assessing adjusted usable acreage to 28.85 and remaining acreage to 36 (a decrease of $27,300 in land value was applied). - A group of condominium and airpark parcels owned by RCMS Inc. and related PINs (including parcel 05506029 and condominium units) were reviewed; assessing recommended values were applied to the parent tract and individual condo PINs (see actions list). The board upheld assessing’s values; two condo parcels received small post-inspection adjustments. - Kalafonski Meadows parcels (05524126, 05524127, 05524130): assessing applied remaining-acre adjustments; the board accepted updated recommended values (74,200; 68,200; 49,700 respectively) after deliberation.

Board members and assessing staff described how the department’s land-modeling uses aerial photos, contours, watershed overlays and field inspection to classify acres as usable or remaining (wetland/unusable). Heather Windsor said the department will classify all land as remaining (wetland) where field evidence and mapping justify it and noted the department can treat property as agricultural if a deed restriction is provided for a lower valuation. Windsor also documented the market-area statistics used: in the K-Beach market area the assessing group reviewed 23 sales for model calibration (median ratio 93.87%; coefficient of dispersion 17.1%).

In each contested item the board retired briefly for adjudicative deliberations with legal counsel and the clerk, then reconvened to announce motions upholding the assessor’s values. Members cited inspecting staff’s findings and statutory/methodological consistency; Member Bagley and others noted that appellants had not shifted the burden of proof to demonstrate an improper valuation.

Urege repeatedly urged the borough and state agencies to authorize drainage work, monitoring wells, or other actions he said would address long-term subsidence and contamination; assessing staff said the department’s role is valuation and that technical remediation or permitting questions are addressed by other borough divisions or state agencies. Windsor said the assessing department had applied reductions where field evidence and mapping supported them and adjusted several appealed parcels downward during the appeal process.

The board’s rulings leave the assessing department’s corrected 2025 assessments in place for the parcels heard at the May 21 session. Appellants retain any further administrative or judicial remedies allowed by borough procedure.