If you own a home or a plot of land within the Kenai Peninsula Borough, be aware that at least one of Ben Franklin’s famous twin certainties is imminent. Of course, should the other also happen, there would be no reason to bewail the first — taxes.

Wednesday, some 60,000 real property tax assessments for 2007 were mailed to legal owners, all of whom now have until March 30 to file a formal appeal, Kenai Peninsula Borough Assessor Shane Horan told a Homer Chamber of Commerce luncheon crowd Tuesday.

Horan was in Homer to present a brief overview of the assessor’s job and explained how state statutes require his office to assess properties for tax purposes at their full and true value, which is to say, at their fair market value.

Horan’s job requires that he certify the assessment roll by June 1 of every year. It is then up to the borough administration and assembly to arrive at an appropriate tax levy, or mill rate, that will generate the funds deemed necessary from property taxes to help run the borough. That assessed value is then multiplied by the borough’s mill rate to generate an owner annual tax debt.

Currently, the borough’s mill rate is 6.5 mills, which generates $650 for each $100,000 of assessed taxable property.

Horan noted that the Homer area is the hottest market on the peninsula at this time.

Homer property values are rising faster than elsewhere in the borough. For instance, a 1.67-acre parcel that sold in February 2005 and again in September 2005 rose in price by 43 percent. Another, a .62-acre parcel, sold in September 2004 and rose 55 percent by the time it sold again in November 2005. Another example jumped 64 percent.

“You can see this trend. There’s a big supply and demand market here,” he said. “We have found that the Homer market is very different from the Kenai market, North Kenai market, Seward — it’s a beast unto itself.”

The median assessment ratio for Homer land in 2006 was about 78 percent. Horan said that told him assessment adjustments would be necessary to reflect real market value. In other words, expect your assessment to go up.

In total, Homer-area property values have gone up a healthy 7 percent from last year, jumping from about $461 million to $490.7 million, Horan said.

“Again, an indication that you guys are doing great,” he said.

Property taxes generate about 60 percent of the overall tax revenue in the borough. By comparison, sales taxes bring in about 19 percent. About 45 percent of tax revenue goes to pay for schools.

The growing disproportion between property and sales taxes has recently led the borough administration to propose an increase in the sales tax from 2 percent to 3 percent. If that occurs, Mayor John Williams has said he is prepared to offer a fiscal year 2008 borough budget that would cut the property tax mill rate from 6.5 mills to 5.5 mills, which would save taxpayers $100 annually on each $100,000 of real property value.

The state is partially responsible for property taxes increasing, Horan said.

“Property taxes have increased in direct correlation with some of the state revenue cuts — state revenue fund has been cut, there’s no funding of the senior citizens/disabled program’s mandatory exemptions, so you can see this (upward) trend (in tax rates).”

The assessor’s job might be quite a bit simpler save for complications, such as a sizable list of exemptions that must be applied, some of which are boroughwide, others that apply either only to the borough or only in certain cities. On top of that, service areas also tax different properties.

It is the borough’s job to sort out all that, collect the tax revenues and see they are distributed to the appropriate municipal entity.

It’s a complex and time-consuming job that the borough does with the assessing department’s 9.5 (fulltime equivalent) employees. It isn’t possible to reassess each property every year, so any one assessment would typically remain in place for several years. Horan said it takes as long as five years to cycle through the long list of taxable properties and adjust their assessments.