Sturgeon councillors took the first step Tuesday towards creating a new minimum property tax for small land parcels.
County council unanimously approved a motion from Coun. Tom Flynn to have administration study the idea. Flynn told councillors, through work on the municipal planning commission, he realized some small land parcels in the county pay very little in taxes. Those amounts might not even cover the cost of mailing the bill, Flynn argued.
“We saw titles that had taxes of less than $10. It raised my thought on how much effect that might be having on us.”
The county’s general manager of corporate services, Rick Wojtkiw said there are currently around 540 parcels of land in the county that pay $10 or less in taxes per year.
Wojtkiw said there were some properties in the county being charged only $1 per year.
He said when the cost of assessing a property and mailing out a tax notice is added up, it costs the county about $35.
Flynn said those properties are not even carrying the cost of paying their taxes and he wanted to study a minimum tax.
“Each one of those properties is being subsidized through all of our other ratepayers.”
Flynn proposed having administration bring forward a bylaw that would create a $50 minimum tax, but other councillors expressed concerns the bylaw should not be drafted until the county had all the numbers.
“When I see some taxes could go up by a factor of 50 times, we have to be fairly careful on this,” said Mayor Don Rigney.
Though an actual debate on a new bylaw is still a few weeks away, Coun. Karen Shaw countered and said looking at the proposal as a percentage increase is the wrong way to think about it.
“I think we have to look less at the percentage and more at what is fair,” she said. “It has nothing to do with the administrative costs. It is about contributing to the county as a whole.”
Sturgeon councillors also took a step towards providing more funding to regional libraries.
Based on a motion from Coun. Karen Shaw, councillors unanimously supported having administration look at the issue for the 2012 budget, but Shaw also insisted the county look at doing something this year if the numbers supported it.
Earlier this year a delegation from the Morinville library board attended council to provide information on what they perceived as a funding imbalance.
According to their numbers, in 2010 about 65 per cent of cardholders were from Morinville and about 34 per cent were from Sturgeon County.
In contrast according to the board's budget, Morinville contributed $250,837 and Sturgeon County provided $33,006.
Shaw told council she felt if county administration agrees the numbers are imbalanced then the county needs to have a plan to address it.
“If we are not paying our fair share then we need to do something about that. We need to step up to the plate.”
