IQALUIT
Iqaluit city council rejected its own plans to redistribute the burden of a tax increase to residential taxpayers from commercial property owners after councillor Kenny Bell suggested at an April 14 meeting that homeowners should not shoulder the burden alone.

City councillor Kenny Bell said April 14 that his council colleagues are "out to lunch" for going ahead with plans to maintain the budget and raise taxes without reconsidering the distribution of the burden. Council agreed, and rejected its own recommendations. - Casey Lessard/NNSL photo

"I honestly believe this council, the committee, is out to lunch for approving this," Bell said ahead of the vote, referring to the numbers determined by the committee for approval at the meeting. "The business community of Iqaluit has provided me with better numbers. The simple math they did to change the numbers made sense, although I still think 17.5 for residential is too high, when we could simply move a little bit of money around and cancel one or two projects."

The finance committee - on which all councillors sit - met March 21 to revisit a proposed mill rate increase, and agreed to maintain its budget plan instead of making cuts that could have lowered the rates for everyone.

Going into the March 21 meeting, the mill rate - which is the amount of tax billed per $1,000 of assessed value - was set to increase by seven per cent for single-family residential, 24 per cent for multi-family dwellings, by 21 per cent for commercial properties, by 31 per cent for industrial, and 25 per cent for institutional ratepayers.

Originally, the low increase for residential was justified as an attempt to avoid making life harder for regular citizens. Facing backlash from the business community, the committee sought to reduce the commercial rate and increase the single-family residential rate by a total amount of $409,500.

Commitment to their March 21 plans had clearly faded by April 14.

"Is this the only option we have?" councillor Noah Papatsie asked finance director John Mabberi-Mudonyi. "Ain't there any other options, like one, two or three, instead of just giving one option?"

"After you deliberated so much during that finance committee meeting, this is what you came up with," Mabberi-Mudonyi responded. "To answer your question, that's ultimately the option you came up with."

"I'm not at all comfortable with this proposed recommendation," Mayor Mary Wilman said.

"This was your recommendation," Mabberi-Mudonyi said, referring to the committee. "If you want me to go back to the drawing board, I'll go back to the drawing board."

"Right now, I'm feeling with councillor Bell's comment saying that the business community has some option to give us, I'm just feeling a bit confused," Coun. Joanasie Akumalik said.

Bell, Papatsie and Akumalik voted against the recommendation.

With councillors Romeyn Stevenson, Simon Nattaq and Terry Dobbin voting in favour, Wilman was forced to break the tie, voting against.

Now, the committee will have to meet again, but this time will consider Bell's suggestion to spread that $409,500 increase between single-family residential, multi-family residential and industrial equally. The institutional (government) rate would remain at 49.27, the highest of the rates.

"It still does what the committee wanted to do," Bell said. "It just makes it even among groups. In my opinion, it's a better option."

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