Town holds meeting on commissioner's lands transfer
Malcolm Gorrill
Northern News Services
Inuvik (Apr 13/01) - The Town of Inuvik wants to acquire enough commissioner's lands to support development for the next three years.
"Our whole objective is to have land available so people can develop it," Mayor Peter Clarkson said. "The main issue probably in the last six months is where can we develop either residential property or commercial property for the Gwich'in, the Inuvialuit and for anybody else in the community."
This week the town is submitting a proposal to Municipal and Community Affairs, outlining which lands they wish to have transferred over to their control. This follows a public meeting held Friday at town hall. About 20 people heard Clarkson and senior administrative officer Jerry Veltman outline the town's proposal.
More than 30 lots the town wishes to acquire are on Industrial Road, with more on other streets.
Veltman said the town's land administration by-law has a policy for determining the price the town would sell these lands for.
"New land will be sold at development cost, and existing land will be sold at some formula established by council based on assessment," Veltman said.
"Currently land in the industrial area, and that's where most of the land has been selling, is being sold at 100 per cent of assessed value."
This value refers to a property's tax assessed value, not its market value. Veltman said that assessments are done on a standard basis throughout the NWT by MACA (but Yellowknife does their own assessment).
The last general assessment for Inuvik was done in 1992. One must be done every 10 years. Veltman said the town's not trying to make a lot of money from land sales.
"The town's lucky to be recovering development costs."
Veltman said that with the cost of just setting up utilidor service ranging from $35,000-$40,000 per lot, a residential lot can entail around $65,000 in development costs.
Clarkson agreed.
"If there are revenues from selling commissioner's lands that we get from the territorial government, and we sell that at the assessed value, that money doesn't go into anybody's pocket," the mayor said. "It goes to benefit the whole community."
