Borough Mayor Mike Navarre attended a Municipal Advisory Gas Project Review Board meeting yesterday to continue to prepare for unique challenges to the Kenai Peninsula that come with the proposed Alaska LNG project.
He recapped one of that meeting’s topics…
Navarre: “We went through the model that they prepared showing the existing taxes that would be generated through the existing tax structure and then we talked about a PILT as a different mechanism that may be necessary in order to make our project, our gas line project, competitive in the world, because everybody’s going to probably give a little to get the benefits of a gas line project.”
Navarre said he requested some adjustments: the calculations for the Kenai Peninsula Borough had been 4.5 mills when with the service areas in the proposed location of the facility it would be closer to 10 mills.
He also detailed what moving to a Payments in Lieu of Taxes system would detail.
Navarre: “So a PILT would require statutory changes which means the legislators have to make those changes and in that instance we’ll get more information I think about what the overall impacts will be. So we’re going to obviously be monitoring the legislation throughout the course of the year.”
There is a tool on the MAGP Board website to look at the numbers of the project and affects of taxes.
Navarre: “Folks can, if they’re interested go in and take a look at it and see what different tax rates, how it impacts the revenues that our generated by the current tax structure.”