St. Albert residents still face a 3.2 per cent increase in their municipal property taxes but the city's residential tax rate is actually decreasing in 2011.
Residents will pay $732 per $100,000 of assessed value compared to $745 in 2010. Non-residential property owners will pay $1,230 per $100,000 compared to $1,229 last year.
City council approved the tax rates Monday evening, a week after adding $1 million in new spending that took the tax increase up from the 2.8 per cent passed in December.
An increase in property values will still see residents pay an average of 3.2 per cent more in municipal taxes but the actual impact on a given household will vary. Three quarters of households will experience an increase between one and five per cent while a smaller portion, 14.8 per cent, will see a change of less than one per cent, either up or down.
About four per cent of households will see their taxes increase between five and 10 per cent while the same number will get a decrease between one and five per cent.
While any tax increase will irk some residents, Mayor Nolan Crouse feels too much is made of St. Albert's high taxes and not enough made of the value that residents receive for their taxes, which includes items ranging from the river to the trail systems to free street parking.
"It's about a hundred items long," he said. "The whole package has a tax implication."
The value of residential properties increased in 2010 after two years of declines, council heard. Most of the growth came from single-family homes, which averaged an increase of 6.3 per cent. Overall, residential values were up 5.1 per cent.
The city will issue property tax notices on May 29 with the payment deadline set at June 30.
Sturgeon Foundation
Taxpayers will also pay an average of $10 more per year to the Sturgeon Foundation, which operates several supportive-living facilities in St. Albert and the surrounding communities.
The organization imposes an annual requisition on its member municipalities. This is basically a bill that each municipality must pay. The requisition is passed directly to St. Albert taxpayers.
The foundation requisitioned $526,000 in 2010, prompting the city to budget for $560,000 in 2011. Instead, the foundation submitted a bill for $836,000, an increase of $276,000 or nearly 50 per cent more than the city's budget.
The sharp increase came because the foundation has been tapping its reserves to meet its funding requirements in the last few years rather than increasing the requisition, said Coun. Wes Brodhead, who represents St. Albert on the Sturgeon Foundation board.
The 2011 increase is the first in what he expects to be two or three years of increases.
"There will be another increase next year. I don't know that it will be of this magnitude," he said.
