City of Powell River Council has adopted the city’s annual property tax rates bylaw.
At the May 4 city council meeting, councillors considered final reading of the bylaw, which, along with the five-year financial plan, must be submitted to the provincial government by May 15.
Finance committee chair councillor Trina Isakson said the way the financial process works is first, the city has to pass a budget, and then a tax rate bylaw must be passed.
“The tax rates take a look at what money the city needs to raise and then divides up the tax rates that are applied to residences, commercial properties and industry, in order to get to that amount,” said Isakson. “They try to do it every year so the proportions among the three are consistent with previous years, allowing for changes with new residences or new commercial properties that were built this year.
“’This is something we’ve discussed at finance committee. The motion is to adopt the tax rates and this allows us to submit our final financial plan and tax rates to the province as required by legislation.”
Councillor George Doubt said he went to the property tax estimator on February 10 to look at what his projected tax increases were going to be for 2023 and the change from 2022.
“I was quite surprised,” said Doubt. “My house is a little bit less than an average value house in town and it changed less in the assessment than the average house did. In February, my taxes showed to be $58 less than the previous year. That was a 1.4 per cent decrease.
“Since February, there have been a number of revisions as we have got more information from BC Assessment that is more clear and detailed. We have more information about regional district taxes, hospital board taxes, and most recently, school board taxes that have been added on.”
Doubt said the number has since changed since February 10, but not because of any confusion or misinformation. He said it changed because the available information was better. He said the impact on him, as a homeowner, is that his taxes have increased by $89, which is 2.1 per cent.
“Again, it’s less than average because of the less than average value of the home,” said Doubt. “I’ve got a number of letters from an individual who said their taxes increased by 12.2 per cent and they are right. Because they are in a home that was above average to start with, and had a very significantly more than average increase in value of 33 per cent over the year, the tax increase was 12.2 per cent. I just wanted to clarify that because of the letters I’ve received asking questions.”
Doubt said the tax increase for the average Powell River home in 2023 is below five per cent, and when looking at other communities, he sees many other communities that are going up to 17 per cent increase in taxes.
“While it’s a lot of money, and it has an impact, I think it’s affordable and I stand by this bylaw.”
Concerned councillor
Councillor Jim Palm said it’s always tough talking about annual tax increases, especially in light of where the community is at, with the uncertainty of the mill lands.
“There’s a lot of talk about recession coming up and we’re going to have to batten down the hatches the next three years of this term,” added Palm. “For those with higher-end homes, and on fixed incomes, those are very difficult topics to discuss in this chamber. We don’t have a remedy at this time with the cost of our liquid-waste facility and the waste-transfer site that’s coming up, but we are going to have to look deep and long at all aspects of the city in the years ahead and do the best we can to tighten our belts.”
Mayor Ron Woznow said the city needs to be proactive. He said there is a select committee on economic development that is going to be looking at city-owned lands to see how to generate more revenue.
“There is some optimism and I’m confident that as this new select committee advises, that we’ll have a meaningful impact over the next couple of years,” added Woznow.
Council passed the tax rate bylaw unanimously.
Chief financial officer Mallory Denniston said the city has all the information required to start on tax notices and staff are busy preparing for that. She said the hope is to send the tax notices out by the end of May.
Property taxes are due July 4.
