City of Powell River councillors were recently provided a snapshot about potential property tax rate ratios for the 2025 taxation year.
At the December 3 committee of the whole meeting, chief financial officer Mallory Denniston said the city would generally talk about property tax rates between March and May, after the city has the assessment rolls, and has direction on the property tax levy.
“What council found last year is it does feel rushed between March and May to consider changes to the property taxes,” said Denniston. “In discussion from last year, what we have put forward in this year’s schedule is having a property tax discussion earlier in the process.
“Staff cannot provide tax rates at this point without the 2025 assessment roll and property tax levy direction. However, there is a ratio we can analyze at any point when we are looking at property taxes and fairness across the classes, and that is the property tax ratio.”
Denniston said the property tax ratio is simply the property tax rate for one class compared to the property tax rate of the residential class. She said her written report to council was providing some comparisons to ratios for each class, compared to some similar communities.
“Through the Community Charter, council has full discretion to set property taxes and set different rates for different classes,” said Denniston. “There is a proposed recommendation, should you want to give staff direction to carry on as we normally would, or, if you would like to give direction on other changes to the ratios you’d like to see us come out of the gate with. This is the direction for the first draft of property taxes, so it’s very high level.”
Denniston said when looking at the total assessment base, 91 per cent of the 2024 value allocation is the residential class, the second largest is business at six per cent, and the third largest is major industry at two per cent. The remaining one per cent is made up of six classes, according to Denniston.
“If we are talking about changes to the property tax ratio for any of those six classes, it’s quite a small impact on all the taxpayers,” said Denniston. “If we are talking about ratio changes for business class or major industry, that gets into bigger impacts.”
Councillor Rob Southcott said he has been hearing from businesses. He said he was in small business for a long time.
“I found the report very interesting because our business ratio is not as high, relatively speaking, to the other communities you’ve chosen, comparatively, to us,” said Southcott. “Back in the history of our community, the business ratio was lower. How much impact would it have if we were to slide the business ratio down?”
Denniston said as far as impact, that is something she could provide in an assessment report in January, or possibly in March when council is discussing property taxes.
Southcott made a motion that the committee directs staff to use the current property tax rate setting methodology as a basis for the first draft of the property tax rates bylaw during 2025 property tax rate deliberations. The committee carried the motion unanimously.
Councillor Cindy Elliott then made a motion that the committee direct staff to bring back information in January about the impacts of lowering the business ratio to three times the residential rate.
“We want our community to be competitive and small businesses need to be able to survive here in our community,” said Elliott. “Looking at that information might help us to make a decision that could be very helpful to our entire economy. I want to see that information.”
Councillor Earl Almeida asked if it would be better to review the information in February, after the BC Assessment roll has been published. Denniston said February was a safer bet.
Elliott then asked about amending the motion to ask staff to bring back information during the discussion around property rates, and would that be a better process?
Denniston said that would be ideal.
Elliott said she wanted to make an amendment to remove the reference to January and replace it with: at the time of property tax rate discussion. The amendment carried.
Council then carried a motion for the committee to direct staff to bring back information at the time of property tax rate discussion about impacts of lowering the business tax ratio to three times the residential rate.
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