Residents can expect to see their tax notices in their mailboxes by the end of May and there will be a 4% increase to municipal taxes and 4.4% increase to education taxes for residential homes, as well as a decrease to property assessments totaling 8.3%, including:
- 9.6% decrease to residential properties
- 5.0% decrease to non-residential properties
On average, for a $350, 000 home, a resident can expect to see an increase of $85.08 for the year.
“Your tax notice will be coming out as we’ve indicated, before the end of May. On the backside, we encourage people to take a look at it because it helps explain what the city is doing with your money,” says Mayor Gerald Aalbers.
Mayor Aalbers adds that it is important to remember that your whole tax bill does not go to the city, with some going to the Municpal Project Levy, the Capital Project Levy and to the Seamless Education Delivery Levy.
“We collect it, but we don’t keep it.”
Council approved all three reading of the Taxable Assessment Bylaw in order to get notices out in a timely manner.
“One of the actions of the new council has been not to push through bylaws in one meeting unless we absolutely had to and we felt, as you can see from the feeling in council that this was a priority to keep the city business running. We believe we didn’t introduce anything new to anyone that has not been there every year,” says Mayor Aalbers.
He adds that for future years they will advise council to have more meetings in the Month of May so that they don’t have to push through all readings at once.
Taxes are due June 30, 2017.