Dear Editor,
I read with interest the article titled “Town’s residential mill rate rises 1%” in the May 3 edition of the Barrhead Leader. A couple days later, I received my 2011 Town combined assessment and property tax notice and after some calculations realized that the headline appears to be incorrect.
My 2010 tax notice indicates the municipal residential mill rate in the Town of Barrhead was 6.0275; therefore, a one-mill increase for 2011 would represent a 16.59 per cent increase over the 2010 tax rate and not a mere one per cent increase (6.0275 times 16.59 per cent = 7.0281). There is a considerable difference between a tax rate increase of one per cent and an increase in excess of 16 per cent from one year to the next.
After doing some further calculations with the information printed in the Leader article and the information sheet I received with my 2011 tax notice, it appears that there is in excess of 17 per cent in taxes being collected from residential properties in 2011 over what was collected from residential properties in 2010. Why such a large increase? What are the rest of the “additional costs that have had a direct impact on the budget” (with insurance, materials, and supplies, as well as increases in utilities, already having been listed)?
Alexis Kiselyk
Barrhead
