WESTLOCK — It took Westlock County two meetings to pass the 2021 tax rate bylaw last week, after Coun. Dennis Primeau continued to argue that councillors aren’t evenly applying cost recovery policies.
Council held a special meeting May 13 when the bylaw finally passed — Primeau and Coun. Isaac Skuban were opposed — since they couldn’t reach unanimous agreement to do third reading at their regular May 11 meeting.
All tax rates have been bumped up two per cent, and farmland is seeing an increase from 24 to 28 mills.
Skuban’s reasons for voting against the budget and the tax rate bylaw have remained consistent since the first draft budget meetings in December, although he did vote to move to third reading on Tuesday. He thinks the county should stabilize its tax rates in order to be attractive for new residents and business, and was also on the side of cutting into services like road gravelling and the transfer sites.
Over the course of the three most recent meetings related to the 2021 budget and tax rates, Primeau has been trying to distance himself from council’s decisions. Last week, he claimed he only agreed to user fees for waste disposal and the Long Island Lake Municipal Campground because he thought the cost recovery model would apply to other “discretionary services” too.
On Tuesday, he claimed he was “left kind of bewildered,” but didn’t say what other areas cost recovery should extend to. Later in the week, he suggested it should be the Tawatinaw Valley Ski Hill. Primeau also claimed the county would be “slaughtered in the press.”
In response to questions from reeve Jared Stitsen about which policy he was talking about, Primeau responded: “You know exactly what I'm talking about,” and pointed to the set of recommendations in the draft 2021 budget. None of them include a full cost recovery model that would apply extensively, or a definition of “discretionary services.”
Two weeks ago, Primeau voted against the budget on the grounds that no public consultation was done, but on Tuesday, he said a decision was made regarding Long Island Lake fees after “input from the population,” which prompted a call-out from Skuban.
“I would just caution Coun. Primeau. Just the other week, you said that we had no public consultation and then just a second ago you said we had public input but we didn’t follow it. So I'd just be weary of using the public’s opinion and changing it week to week to justify your opinion, I don’t think that’s fair to ratepayers,” Skuban told him.
Three major policies, including the campground fees, the closure of two transfer sites and the implementation of a new springtime road use agreement were modified or dropped after public discontent.
“I don’t know where you’re getting this information from, I have an idea, I can speculate, but I'm not about to say it,” Coun. Lou Hall told Primeau.
Primeau gets personal
Things turned agitated at the Thursday meeting, with Primeau now arguing against what he says is a “discriminatory” tax increase on farmland from a council mostly staffed by acreage owners apart from himself, that he also said is driven by “outside groups and forces.”
“Obviously, there is a council problem and with only one farmer on council, this is probably pretty close to where it starts from, this is driven from an acreage-driven council, taxes are being directed to one group only that has, as I said, almost no representation whatsoever. This is an extremely discriminatory tax on a select group of people,” Primeau said, a statement that was not well-received by the rest of council.
He called deputy reeve Brian Coleman “delusional” after he said the draft budget with a tax rate of 30 mills received unanimous support.
“I’m going to reiterate that my support was conditional on going to the public. Trying to confuse this is false information and everybody knows it is. You're trying to malign a councillor,” Primeau said.
“I only deal in facts, and the comment that I made is that we had a vote on the interim budget with a mill rate of 30 for farmland and we had unanimous support. That's my only comment, and that’s a fact,” replied Coleman.
Primeau retracted the label after a warning from Stitsen.
To the reeve, some of the revenue problems in the county can be traced back to farmer-majority councils that were protective of farmland and discouraged acreages.
"Our land use bylaw was directed in that fashion to preserve farmland and there’s actually quotes right in there to wherever possible, preserve farmland,” Stitsen said.
“And I understand that, I come from a farming background, we have farmland as well. But what it did is it deterred acreages from coming to Westlock County.”
Primeau said the county will have the highest farmland mill rate across rural Alberta, which the Westlock News has verified is true. Lethbridge County is second at 25 mills.
The News has not compared Westlock County to other municipalities on the residential or industrial tax rates.
Apart from selling the ski hill, a veiled or implied argument for the most part, Primeau did not offer other suggestions for cutting costs despite claiming he could. The county also has an agreement in place with the Town of Westlock to split the costs of recreation in the area.
Any change in facilities would prompt a recalculation of the county’s dues. This year, they’ll pay $433,000 to the town.
