WESTLOCK – Town of Westlock councillors have unanimously rejected a proposed bylaw that would have seen the owners of the community’s three manufactured home parks tasked with collecting the associated municipal property taxes on the trailers within them.
At their March 22 regular meeting, councillors voted 0-7 against third reading of Bylaw 2020-24 Taxation of Designated Manufactured Homes, stating the municipality should be collecting property taxes and the bylaw would place an undue burden on the park owners. With the bylaw now dead, park owners will continue paying property taxes on the entirety of the land they own, while trailer homeowners will pay property taxes on their homes, plus whatever lot fee they’re charged.
At the March 15 committee of the whole meeting, council debated whether just to walk away from the bylaw, which meant it would have been on the books for two years stuck at second reading, but voted 6-1 to rise and report on the edict at the March 22 meeting as bylaws can only be discussed at COW and not enacted.
“I still firmly believe that it is the municipality’s role to collect our property taxes and I do appreciate that the (park) owners have come forward with an offering of improved communications and I look forward to that and trust that will aid administration,” said Coun. David Truckey, who made the motion to proceed with third reading to start debate on the bylaw.
“I’m not in favour of this bylaw and spoke to it at the committee of the whole and I’m glad to hear that council appears to be on the same page as well,” added Coun. Murtaza Jamaly.
First presented to council in December where it received two readings, admin said the bylaw would taper the 138 tax accounts in the parks down to three, cut the delay of transfer of ownership information from landowners, which can hinder tax collection, eliminate any tax recovery on properties not associated to the land and align the tax and utility collection process.
In December, CAO Simone Wiley told council that there are a “handful” of municipalities, including High Level where she previously worked, that have similar bylaws.
“Part of this can be blamed on me as I’ve always asked administration to come up with some ideas that we as council can help them with to streamline some of the areas of concern they have,” offered Coun. John Shoemaker. “But I’m very satisfied that the landowners have come forward and offered better communication so I think that’s a plus and it will help administration with the collections.”
Park owners, who attended the meeting online meeting and spoke for about five minutes, were pleased that council decided against the change and stated they intend to work more closely with the town on the tax collection process. Admin’s briefing to council at the March 15 COW meeting noted the municipality has 11 properties currently in the tax recovery process and four of those are in the manufactured home parks.
“We feel that we can work with the current bylaw and we’ll do our best to help the town administration to get the information they need to improve their taxation ability,” said Westlock Trailer Park owner Trent Muller. “We can even meet with administration every once in a while and inform them of all the change overs in the park. We can certainly assist them better than we have in the past.”
Added Wiley: “I think what administration was trying to accomplish, can be accomplished by the increased communication that we’ve talked about.”
