The Town of Westlock is eyeing a change that would see the owners of the community’s three manufactured home parks pay the associated municipal taxes on the trailers — a move administration says will streamline the tax collection process by deleting more than 100 tax accounts.
At their Dec. 14 meeting, town councillors gave unanimous first and second readings to Bylaw 2020-24 Taxation of Designated Manufactured Homes — administration, who’ve been tasked with contacting the owners of the mobile home parks for feedback, will bring the document back to council’s Jan. 18 committee of the whole meeting.
“If there’s something council can do to help you, administratively, save some of your time this is right in wheelhouse … I like it. If this is going to help I think we should be all over it,” said Coun. John Shoemaker.
Section 4.1 clearly spells out the intent of the edict: “When the Town of Westlock assesses a designated manufactured home and any other improvements on a site in a manufactured home park within the Town of Westlock’s taxation boundaries, the registered owner of the manufactured home park shall be the assessed person with respect to each designated manufactured home within the particular manufactured home park and that owner shall be responsible for payment of taxes as the assessed person.”
Currently, the park owners pay property taxes on the land, while the homeowners pay taxes on their buildings, plus whatever lot fee is charged by the park owner. In the bylaw presentation to council, CAO Simone Wiley noted there are 138 tax accounts, which will be paired down to three if the change is made.
As well, admin notes the proposed change will cut the delay of transfer of ownership information from landowners, which can hinder tax collection, eliminate any tax recovery on property not associated to the land and align tax collection with utility collection.
“Administration can spend a lot of time in doing the tax collection process on manufactured homes. (By doing the change) we would take it down to three roll numbers. It would really assist in the tax collection process in those areas. There are some good reasons why administratively it makes a lot of sense. But we do recognize it puts more burden on the actual landowners of the manufactured home parks,” said Wiley.
“They do collect a lot rent now so we would be suggesting to them to include whatever the tax value is in the lot rent so they’re collecting throughout the year from the actual dwelling owner.”
Added finance director Julia Seppola: “It also brings into alignment with the utility bills also going to the landowner. It relieves that amount of work (admin does) and reduces it down to the landowner. When you’re collecting taxes that are associated with land it’s an easier process.”
Wiley, who noted they haven’t had the document vetted by legal counsel, said there are many other municipalities, including High Level where she previously worked, that have similar bylaws.
“My previous municipality has had this bylaw in place since 2012. I know Julia’s team in finance pulled at least five or six other bylaws, likely more, in making sure this was good for us to do. We also reached out to our assessor and he has no issues with it,” said Wiley.
“This is a very straightforward bylaw and having reviewed quite a few we’re confident in it.”
Although council appeared in favour of the change, they wanted to hear feedback from the park owners before passing the bylaw.
“I would tend to agree with Coun. Snell’s thought process (on asking for feedback). In many cases the assessed value of the subject properties is lower and the amount of taxes we collect on it is lower, but that’s basically going to put that burden on to the property owner,” said Coun. David Truckey. “It’s going to make the lot collection, which is a flat rate right now, to a variable price, so that’s going to be an ongoing annual event for those landowners. And I think they should have some form of consultation rather than read about it in the newspaper.”
