CHAIRMAN OLBERG brought forth CSSB 240 and said, "My intention today is to take action on SB 240 by adopting the amendment that the North Star Borough and the University of Alaska agreed to..." Number 029 REPRESENTATIVE JOHN DAVIES moved to "hold SB 240 until tomorrow because we're still in a state of dueling amendments." REPRESENTATIVE CYNTHIA TOOHEY objected for the "purpose of discussion". WENDY REDMAN, VICE PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY RELATIONS, UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA, said, "I'm a little unclear as to what the dueling amendments are. As far as the university's concerned, we have responded to all of the concerns expressed by the borough. I've given you a copy of the amendment which has taken care of the concerns, which I think are legitimate, raised by the borough which have to do with whether or not a private six-plex for instance, could suddenly fill up with students and the owner could claim it was now student housing and therefore could be eligible for the optional tax exemption." (A copy of this amendment is on file.) She continued, "So we have written in this amendment to make sure that it is with a written agreement with the university and it is part of the university's official student housing, which takes care of those concerns. There are some additional concerns which I cannot address fully. That is, there is some feeling on the part of the North Star Borough that they'd like to restrict this to university land only. While that works in Fairbanks, it does not in Anchorage where we will be interested in looking at student housing that may well not be on university land. So that concern I cannot fully respond to at this point." Number 074 CHAIRMAN OLBERG suggested a technical amendment to the amendment inserting the word "is" into the amendment. He moved that amendment to the amendment. There were no objections. CHAIRMAN OLBERG asked, "Representative Davies, does the North Star Borough want to restrict this to university land?" REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES replied, "That I think is one of the North Star Borough's concerns, yes. There's also some concerns that I have heard expressed about the duration of the agreement which I've been trying to get some clarification from the Chair, the presiding officer of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly and I haven't been able to clarify whether or not there's a suggestion on that or not. I understand that there is, I just haven't gotten direct input on it. Mr. Chairman, we're going to meet tomorrow, I just would respectfully request an opportunity to continue trying to achieve some kind of consensus here in one more 24 hour period." Number 107 CHAIRMAN OLBERG pointed out, "This legislation says `A municipality may by ordinance' do these things and one of the things it may do by ordinance is `classify and exempt from taxation all or any portion of.' Wouldn't the situation in Fairbanks be different than Anchorage, which is different than Juneau... What it really says is the Fairbanks North Star Borough may by ordinance do this or not do this, or do it in some specific fashion. I question whether we need to do something with a statute that gives the option locally as it's drafted now." REPRESENTATIVE JERRY SANDERS joined the committee. REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES said, "I guess my understanding of the Mayor's concern about that point is that...if you allow the municipality to do something that the municipality may not really want to have happen. You get a situation where there's a sort of snowballing of testimony at a particular assembly meeting that can kind of roll the decision one way or another... It may not be our intent to allow slum landlord six-plexes downtown to be part of the university housing, but if we were to have a loophole in here that allowed that, there may develop a lot of pressure within the municipality to do that. So, what the mayor's concern is that he would like the bill to be crafted tightly enough that it only allows those things done which we really concur that the university ought to be doing here. Not extend the authority any further because he's afraid that there will develop a certain amount of pressure from people who have an economic interest in that to get taken off the tax rolls. His fundamental concern is that he doesn't want to see properties that are now on the tax rolls being removed..." REPRESENTATIVE TOOHEY said, "If the mayor of North Star Borough is so concerned, I would like to have heard from him. He's had sufficient time..." Number 183 CHAIRMAN OLBERG moved to adopt the amended amendment. REPRESENTATIVE CON BUNDE reminded the committee that Representative Davies already had a motion before the committee to hold SB 240 in committee until the following day. CHAIRMAN OLBERG withdrew his motion to adopt the amended amendment. REPRESENTATIVE BILL WILLIAMS addressed Representative Davies motion saying, "It says here `based upon a written agreement with the University of Alaska,' wouldn't that take care of the concerns of the mayor?" CHAIRMAN OLBERG said, "The agreement Tuesday (April 26, 1994) was that within 24 hours all the friendly attorneys of all the relevant organizations would get together and draft an amendment which would make everybody happy. Forty-eight hours later, it appears that that didn't happen..." Number 230 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES said, "Just for your information, we've been working fairly hard over the interim to try to come up with some compromise and unfortunately, the fact is ten minutes before I came down here I was on the phone with the mayor and he has not approved this amendment that's before us. So the amendment can't be characterized as an amendment that incorporates the borough's concerns in their entirety." CHAIRMAN OLBERG said, "One thing we've tried to do in this committee and we haven't always been successful but, to the extent possible, we've tried to maintain a position that local option was important..." Number 252 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES said, "What this amendment does is it allows people, as the situations develop in the boroughs where the university would come to an agreement with some private property owner whose property is presently on the tax rolls to convert that into student housing and then remove that existing building from the tax rolls..." CHAIRMAN OLBERG interjected, "Only with the consent of the North Star Borough." REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES said, "No, only with the consent of the university. The borough has no role in it... It's just going to be very difficult, if it's permitted in the law and the university wants to do it, for the assembly to turn that down." Number 273 REPRESENTATIVE TOOHEY declared a conflict of interest because she is "the owner of historic sites and of historic buildings." She said, "I just want that to be on the record that I'm tax exempt from municipalities because I own a historic site." CHAIRMAN OLBERG insisted that she still vote and rephrased the motion pending saying, "Shall we hold CSSB 240 until tomorrow, I have objected." A roll call vote was taken. REPRESENTATIVES TOOHEY, WILLIAMS, BUNDE, SANDERS AND OLBERG voted AGAINST the motion. REPRESENTATIVES WILLIS AND DAVIES voted FOR the motion. THE MOTION FAILED. CHAIRMAN OLBERG moved to adopt the amended amendment. REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES objected. A roll call vote was taken. REPRESENTATIVES TOOHEY, WILLIAMS, BUNDE, SANDERS AND OLBERG voted FOR the motion. REPRESENTATIVES WILLIS AND DAVIES voted AGAINST the motion. THE MOTION PASSED ADOPTING THE AMENDED AMENDMENT. REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES moved to "substitute Section D with the following language: `A private leasehold, contract or other interest in University of Alaska property which is used exclusively for student housing.'" CHAIRMAN OLBERG objected and said, "(This) would have the net effect of not impacting the North Star Borough in any way because the University property is already exempt. Is that correct?" REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES said yes. Number 334 REPRESENTATIVE BUNDE asked about "statewide application" of the bill. MS. REDMAN said, "The amendment that Representative Davies has put forward is the amendment that the borough has consistently been putting forward and it isn't acceptable to us because, in Fairbanks at the present time, frankly, we're not looking at any non-university land for dormitories, but they're anticipating something way down the road. And I understand that's their job. However, in Anchorage, where we're in a much different situation relative to how much land the university owns, it is in fact likely that if we were able to go into a private-public partnership with an owner, it would be on contiguous land to university land. So it's very important to us that we leave the flexibility in this bill to allow us to develop housing on private property. In terms of that amendment...it seems to me that that also provides actually less flexibility. What we were trying to do with the amendment in D in 30 years is to set a limit. No more than 30 years. You can certainly give less, because in our discussions with individuals who have been involved and there are 13 states right now where they've gone into these kinds of private-public partnerships on the construction of student housing..., but it may well be that a borough with their option chooses not to give a tax exemption for the full 30 year period but they may wish to only give it for 10 years of the 30 year mortgage. They may wish to give the exemption only for the land, not for the improvements, or only for the building and not for the student rents. Every municipality has a different situation and it may be that the situation is different if there is more than one project. Our goal was to try to give all of that flexibility to the municipality based on what they see their needs as." Number 365 CHAIRMAN OLBERG said, "Is there some reason we're not hearing from the City of Fairbanks about this. REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES said it's a borough issue. REPRESENTATIVE BUNDE asked, "Have there been any other cities that have been in correspondence about this?" CHAIRMAN OLBERG said, "I'm not aware, Representative Bunde, that we've heard from anybody...other than the mayor of the North Star Borough through Representative Davies." MS. REDMAN said, "We did contact the Anchorage municipality with the draft copy of the bill a month or so ago, and their lobbyist indicated that they have no problem with the bill." Number 400 A roll vote was taken on Representative Davies's motion to substitute Section D. REPRESENTATIVES WILLIS AND DAVIES voted YES. REPRESENTATIVES TOOHEY, WILLIAMS, BUNDE, SANDERS AND OLBERG voted NO. THE MOTION FAILED. REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAMS moved to pass CSSB 240 out of committee, as amended with individual recommendations. There were no objections.