AMMAN: Town council announced to increase planned tax 1.15 per cent to 3.89 per cent and forgo the surplus, or find a compromise between those two options, said Watson-Neufeld.
Taxes won’t be going up as much as originally forecast in an advanced budget put forward by Sundre’s council before the new year. Meeting council was informed that higher-than-anticipated assessments meant there was a $75,000 surplus in the budget.
But council was evenly split on whether to leave the tax rate as it was tentatively set in December or if it should be decreased a bit.
In the lead up to the discussion, Wanda Watson-Neufeld, director of corporate services, brought council up to speed.
“We will be discussing the spring budget adjustment on April 13, but we have some new information,” she said.
During the November and December preliminary budget deliberations, council had approved a maximum tax rate adjustment of 3.89 per cent higher than 2014, said Watson-Neufeld.
That meant the average resident would see a hike of $85.50 and the average commercial taxpayer would see about a $126.90 increase, she said.
“That was expecting that the assessments would come in with a two per cent increase,” said Watson-Neufeld.
“They came in with a 4.56 per cent increase, so substantially higher than I estimated in the budget,” she said, adding this gave council an opportunity to make a new decision.
Council could either choose to leave the tax rate as previously set, drop the increase to 1.15 per cent from 3.89 per cent and forgo the surplus, or find a compromise between those two options, said Watson-Neufeld.
“However, we know that there are some outstanding issues that likely should have been budgeted for and were not,” she said, pointing out several town facilities that in the near future will need repairs or upgrades. They include the activities centre, the town office, town shop and the fire hall. Some of the problems include water leaks and potential mould.
“All of these things need to be looked at,” said Watson-Neufeld, adding that while these issues don’t necessarily all need to immediately be addressed in 2015, they should at least be looked into.
Mayor Terry Leslie said this was good news that provided council with options.
“We have an opportunity because we have a little extra money, and we could put that in a facility reserve account and prepare for dealing with all of these unbudgeted realities,” he said.
“I like the idea of having that extra $75,000 for the purposes mentioned, no doubt about that,” said Coun. Myron Thompson. “But I also don’t like the idea of about 25 people I know of that live in this town that got laid off from their work.”
With the current economic conditions, there will be stress put on a large number of people, and Thompson felt it would be good news for them if council announced it was reducing the planned tax increase. His recommendation was to reduce the surplus by half to earmark some funding for the town’s facilities while finding room to give taxpayers a little break.
Coun. Chris Vardas agreed that would be good news.
“But on the other hand – I’m going to play the devil’s advocate here – when we give that money back and then we don’t have enough money in the reserves, eventually we’re going to have to dip back into our accounts or increase the taxes later on to maintain these facilities or upgrade them,” he said.
While he expressed sympathy for people in tough financial straights, Vardas argued council had kept the tax rate reasonable, and that leaving it as is “would save us a heck of a lot of trouble next year and the year after that,” he said.
However, Mayor Terry Leslie said he felt it’s “incumbent upon us to look at opportunities that we get to assist taxpayers.”
The mayor expressed concern over the possibility of the surplus ending up just sitting in the reserve. He felt the tax rate should be lowered to less than two per cent.
“There’s a part of me that really wants to set aside that $75,000 because we really could use it,” said Leslie. But the mayor said he remembered the biggest issue with residents in the last election was taxes.
Echoing what Vardas said was Coun. Tony Jordan.
Although he understood and said he agreed with the arguments made in favour of lowering the tax rate, Jordan added “logic speaks to me in a different way of saying if we don’t do it now we’re going to have to do it later.”
