Town residents will see a little change to their property taxes this year, after council approved a zero per cent increase.
Council unanimously passed the 2019 tax rate bylaw during their regular meeting on Tuesday, April 23.
“I just thought we could do trimming. We could adjust our scopes and things like that to ensure that we, at least as a municipality, were doing our part not to increase costs,” said Mayor Gene Sobolewski of why council decided against a rise in taxes.
While the tax rate didn’t go up, the mill rate needed to be adjusted to compensate for a drop in assessments.
“The mill rate for residential has increased overall by 0.81572 mills due to a decrease in assessments and commercial has increased by 0.4043 mills due to a decrease in assessment,” explained Renee Stoyles, director of finance.
Residential assessments saw a dip of eight per cent this year, and non-residential decreased by three per cent. As a result, the municipal mill rate needed to be increased by 9.28 per cent for residential to 6.92 mills, while commercial went up by 3.42 per cent to 9.99 mills.
“Since (the assessments) all went down, we multiply the mill rate by the assessed value, which is based on market, to establish the taxes,” explained CAO Mark Power. “Working the reverse way around, you take the same amount of taxes we collected last year and you divide it by this year’s new assessment, which is lower, and results in a higher mill rate.”
In addition to the municipal portion, the town also collects taxes for schools, seniors, and the Centennial Centre.
“At the time of writing (the tax bylaw) there was no school requisition available, so it’s based on the 2018 requisition. Should the 2019 requisition be available prior to the 2018 tax notices, the school tax rate will be amended and brought to council to be amended,” detailed Stoyles.
The 2019 school requisition sits at 3.047 mills for residential properties, an increase of 7.45 per cent. The commercial went up by 1.49 per cent to around 4.25 mills. In total, the municipality will collect over $3.38-million for the school requisition.
The seniors requisition saw a slight decrease from last year for both residential and commercial, bringing the mill rate to 0.09. Just over $87,000 will be collected for these taxes.
Similarly, for the C2 mill rate, it saw a slight increase over 2018. For residential, it sits around 0.19 and 0.35 mills for commercial. Approximately $252,000 goes toward the C2 requisition.
Combining all four of these areas, residents will see an overall mill rate increase of 8.63 per cent to 10.26 mills for 2019. The mill rate for commercial properties is set at 14.69, up 2.83 per cent over last year. This puts both rates at the highest they’ve been since 2007.
For example, a property with an assessed value of $308,100 for 2019 will see an overall tax bill of $3,163, approximately $5 more than last year. That same property was assessed at $334,150 in 2018, and the overall taxes were $3,158.
The municipal portion of the taxes comes in around $2,134.
That same property will be paying around $938 for the school requisition, $27 for the seniors requisition, and $61 for the C2.
A commercial property with an assessed value of $2.18-million for 2019 will see their taxes come in at over $32,000, a slight decrease from last year. Previously, the same property was assessed at $2.25-million, and the overall taxes were around $32,200. Of that, around $9,300 is for school requisition, $198 for seniors, and $777 for the C2.
While a property assessed at just over $517,000 for 2019 will see an overall tax bill of just under $7,600. That property’s assessment in 2018 was $553,480 and their taxes were just over $7,910. The school requisition portion comes in at just under $2,200, $46 for seniors, and $183 for the C2.
Overall, the town will be collecting around $4.06-million in residential and $3.79-million from commercial taxes for 2019.
