Residential and farmland properties in Westlock County will see a 3.98 per cent increase in their tax rate this year, while non-residential properties face a 3.57 per cent increase.
Councillors voted 6-0 to pass all three readings of the 2019 Property Tax Bylaw at their May 14 meeting —Coun. Darrell Osmond was absent. They also passed the finalized operating budget which called for $11,465,881 to be covered by municipal taxes with $9,232,427 in revenue and $20,698,308 in expenses.
Director of corporate services Diane Urkow addressed council on the bylaw, noting the county currently exceeds the legislated 5:1 ratio between the residential and non-residential tax rates.
The county is grandfathered, but the province requires this ratio be met in the future. In 2018, the ratio was 5.53 and for 2019 the ratio is reduced to 5.51, so it is slowly decreasing.
An average residential assessment of $250,000 will see an annual increase of $47.67 from 2018 which is $3.97 per month.
Reeve Lou Hall said she considers being able to keep the tax rate where it is as an accomplishment, considering the earliest version of the budget called for upwards of a 14 per cent increase in the tax rate to maintain current service levels.
The provisional budget passed in December came out with a 3.98 per cent increase, which council and administration managed to maintain even though they used 2018 assessment values.
CAO Leo Ludwig said there were some increases in other assessment areas, so even with the continued loss of revenue from the linear assessment roll they were able to maintain that number.
“That partially offset that loss, but then there were some others where the numbers were more certain in April than they were back in November when the drafts were done, so we were able to fine tune a number of those,” said Ludwig.
“It has been a challenge because we keep seeing this loss of revenue and there is no corresponding loss of service so there is no loss of expense that comes with it ... We buy fuel and gravel and they have different inflation factors on them and they’ve all gone up.
“With the carbon tax, everything we purchase has levies and extra charges for those companies to recover the costs that they’re paying.”
Urkow also specifically noted the loss of revenue from linear assessment for infrastructure like pipelines and wellsites. Two oil and gas companies that operated in the county declared bankruptcy in 2018, which resulted in $223,342 tax dollars that cannot be collected by the county.
Deputy reeve Brian Coleman pointed out linear assessment accounts for 11.2 per cent of the total assessment, but provides 28 per cent of the tax levy.
“The linear assessment seems to be less and less, so I think it’s something we need to be aware of in our long term plan that it does provide such a large part of our tax levy. If we continue to lose that linear assessment we have to be prepared to deal with that,” he said.
Drilling down, the 2019 residential mill rate is 4.5347, while the county broke out a recreation mill rate, which sits at .5079 — combined is 5.0426. In 2018, the county’s residential mill rate, which didn’t include recreation broken out, was 4.8496.
The 2019 farmland mill rate is 23.734, plus .5079 for recreation for a combined total of 24.2393 — 2018’s mill rate was 26.8235.
The 2019 mill rate for non-residential, linear, electric power generating, designated industrial, designated industrial machinery and equipment and machinery and equipment is 24.9844, while recreation is 2.7967 for a total of 27.2811. The 2018 mill rate for those categories was 26.8235.
Homeland Housing’s mill rate is .5434, versus .5320 in 2018, while the school requisition is 2.5901 (2.6038 in 2018) for residential/farmland and 3.7069 (3.6320 in 2018) for other eligible classes. Property owners should expect notices in the mail in by the last week in May, while taxes are due by June 28.
