Eric Sputek, president of the Kam Lake Property Owners Association, speaks out against several proposals to mitigate the impact of an unforeseen jump in property taxes that were presented to council during a municipal services committee meeting on Monday. Sputek argued the options being put forward didn't address the disparity between the taxes paid by Kam Lake property owners and the services they received from the city. - Cody Punter/NNSL photo |
Decision delayed in Kam Lake tax debacle
Council requests more information from administration before deciding whether to offer discounted tax rates to disgruntled property owners
Cody Punter
Northern News Services
Published Friday, October 10, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The Kam Lake tax dabacle continues to drag on after council told administration it wasn't provided with enough information to move ahead with two proposals that would alleviate the burden of inflated tax hikes faced by property owners in the area.
Council supports five-year assessment period
In the wake of the recent outcry from Kam Lake property owners, council is supporting a reduction in the period between property assessments to five years, down from seven.
The increased frequency is being made in an effort to limit the shock of a jump in property values between assessments.
Properties in Yellowknife were assessed by the city every four years ever since it took over the responsibility of conducting assessments from the GNWT in the mid-1990s. However, the recent round of assessments was delayed for three years beyond that time-frame due to "budgetary considerations," according to a city memo.
The increased frequency in the general assessment means the city will have to allocate an additional $50,000 to the budget every five years.
"The terrible irony of this whole thing being that we cancelled or postponed (the assessment) from four to seven (years) in an effort to save money," said Coun. Adrian Bell.
The change in assessment period will have to be approved at a later council meeting.
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During Monday's committee meeting, councillors were provided several options that could potentially lead to forgiveness for a portion of the inflated tax rates.
One measure would be to pass a bylaw that would limit tax increases to property owners to the neighbourhood average of 31.28 per cent for those whose taxes went up by more than $1,200.
The other would be to provide a grant that would allow the city to limit the tax increase for Kam Lake residents to a maximum of 25 per cent for each year between 2014 and 2016.
Both rebate programs would require permission from the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA) and would be paid for out of the projected $523,000 surplus the city is expected to bring in as a result of increased tax revenue this year.
The option to defer a portion of taxes over several years, which is the only one that would not require MACA's approval, was also put on the table despite being dismissed at a committee meeting in August.
As with previous meetings on the subject, more than 20 residents from Kam Lake packed council chambers to voice their dissatisfaction with the options presented to council.
Eric Sputek, president of the Kam Lake Property Owners Association, argued that none of the proposed options addressed the disparity between the taxes paid by Kam Lake property owners and the services they received from the city.
"When I look at the options ... I don't think that they completely address what the problem is," he said.
"We're missing the boat on the issue."
After hearing from several frustrated residents, Coun. Bob Brooks said council needed to have more information before making a decision and asked administration to come back with more options, which was met by a round of applause from those in attendance.
All councillors present at the meeting supported sending the memorandum back to council, but did not put forward suggestions on what options would be preferable to those already on the table.
Several councillors did take the opportunity to criticize the way the mill rate situation was handled in the first place.
"I think the problem is there were several people asleep at the switch and that includes council and administration," said Coun. Adrian Bell.
Bell expressed concern that applying rebates to property owners in Kam Lake would be unfair. He asked administration to provide information on whether it would be possible to apply it to other property owners who had faced huge increases.
"We cannot continue to curveball our residents," added Coun. Phil Moon Son, who said he would fight for an across-the-board tax decrease next year rather than tinker with current Kam Lake tax assessments.
Brooks also suggested that all residents who had an issue with the assessed value of their property should file an appeal with the board of revision.
Upon hearing that suggestion, Kam Lake property owner Donny Robinson got up to tell council he had filed an appeal, but had not heard back from the city in the two months since his most recent submission.
"I don't think appealing our taxes means anything," said Robinson.
Plans to assess Kam Lake properties through a mixture of residential and commercial mill rates was also sent back for further consideration by administration at Monday's meeting.
Council had originally suggested creating a specific mill rate for Kam Lake in order to account for the mix of smaller live-in businesses and larger industrial-use properties.
However, creating mill rates based on geography, rather than the type of property, is not permitted under territorial legislation. As such, administration proposed rezoning Kam Lake to allow some properties to be assessed as residential and others as commercial.
Kam Lake resident Gord Olson was one of several Kam Lake residents who tried to dissuade council from allowing residential development to be permitted in Kam Lake. Olson argued that allowing people to be assessed at the residential rate would drive out established businesses over time.
"I was put there to build a business, and make noise and make money and that's my objective," he said, adding people who wanted to live in a residential area had plenty of places to choose from. "I wouldn't support changing mill rates because you didn't take the time to put industrial in one place, small business in another place. That's not my fault. You should have thought of that before you started blending everything together. That's your bad planning."
Bell said trying to fix the Kam Lake tax problem in a piecemeal fashion would only distract from the fact that there are underlying issues with the city's tax system as a whole.
"This is like throwing a bone to Kam Lake without addressing the underlying problems," said Bell. "If we throw in place some of these Band-Aid solutions, we won't get to the discussions."
The possibility of rezoning Kam Lake will be reviewed by administration and brought back to council at a later date.
