Council got down to the business of budgets at Monday night’s, May 11, Council meeting and approved the capital budget and passed the Mill Rate Bylaw, setting the tax rate for 2020.
The Council set the residential tax mill rate at 8.31196, an increase of 1.9 per cent over the 2019 mill rate. The education tax mill rate for residential was set at 2.67483 and the Drumheller and District Senior Foundation rate was set at 0.58222. This equates to an overall mill rate of 11.56901.
This means for a property valued at $200,000 the taxes would be $2,313.80, compared to 2019 taxes of $2,267. For a property valued at $300,000, there would be taxes of $3470.70, an increase of about $70 compared to 2019.
The non-residential total mill rate was set at 17.81293, an increase of about 2 per cent.
This year Council was faced with a declining assessment, and a 1.9 per cent mill rate increase left a shortfall of about $180,000 in revenue. Rather than increasing the mill rate, council opted to work to find other ways to make up the shortfall this year.
“If everything we budgeted for when things were normal (pre-COVID), we whittled, we chipped and we got it down to as low as we could,” said Councillor Fred Makowecki. “It is lower than our counterparts and we are probably going to spend the rest of the year chiseling and whittling to try to keep expenses down, and make this as little of an impact as we can on the community.”
Residential assessment saw a 3 per cent decrease in value overall. Tax notices should arrive by the first week of June.
Council also approved its capital budget. The capital expense in 2020 totals about $43 million, and it’s made up of about $2.5 million carried forward from 2019, about $7 million in new projects in 2020, with about half coming from grant dependent requests, over $19 million in 2020 for expenses related to the Resiliency and Flood Mitigation programs, and more than $14 million as possible economic stimulus projects should funding become available from higher levels of government.
The initial budget called for about $7 million to come from infrastructure reserves. Councillor Jay Garbutt, concerned about the cost of the local COVID-19 pandemic response asked council to consider deferring several small projects and purchases, totaling about $900,000 coming from reserves, and to put those savings into a reserve for the town’s COVID -19 response.
“From an operating standpoint, we know that over the summer our expenses will be curtailed by not opening our expensive but beloved facilities, the Aquaplex and BCF, but we will not be receiving their admission and rental revenue either. It’s hard to imagine how many more, if any, staff could be laid off after now going through two rounds of layoffs or what functions and operations could still be cut. It’s equally hard to imagine how many property tax defaults or delays could occur this August. With all those considerations it’s truly foggy where we’ll be from an operating budget standpoint come September,” he said.
“What that leaves us with, what is still under our control, is the capital budget, and I would consider it irresponsible, at a minimum, not to dramatically reduce the planned 2020 capital spend to reflect our uncertain future and our past and future COVID-related expenses.”
Council was able to identify the savings and agreed to the amendment in passing the Capital budget.
While tax rates cannot be appealed, a resident can appeal their assessment. For a property owner to appeal, the first step is to compare your assessment to other similar properties. This can be done at town hall. If you are not satisfied, you can file a written appeal to the Assessment Review Board Clerk at the Town of Drumheller Office. This appeal must be done within 60 days of the Notice of Assessment date. There is a fee to appeal, which will be refunded if the board rules in your favour, or the appeal is withdrawn prior to it being heard by the board.
More information is available at https://www.dinosaurvalley.com/how-to-appeal-assessment or by calling 403-823-1314.
