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.

Three people have been charged following an investigation that led to the recovery of stolen items from a property near Carbon.
An ongoing property crime investigation led by the Southern Alberta District Crime Reduction Team has lead to the recovery of five trucks, a boat and trailer, and other vehicles.
On April 28, 2020, the resources of RCMP Air Services, Emergency Response Team, and both Drumheller and Beiseker RCMP were all employed in the execution of a search warrant on a property in Carbon. Numerous stolen items were recovered and seized. Recovered items include:
- Momba LSE22 boat and trailer
- 2020 Chevrolet diesel pickup
- 1970 Ford F100 custom truck
- 2000 GMC Sierra truck
- 2018 30 foot gooseneck trailer / 2014 25 foot gooseneck trailer
- Case TR270 Track Loader
- 2000 Chevrolet pickup truck
- Ford F350 truck
Starr Bowman (32) and Devon Tanner (34) are both charged with possession of a motor vehicle over $5000, possession of stolen property (x3), and fail to comply with an order (x4).
Tanner is next scheduled to appear in court on May 15 and Bowman is scheduled to appear in court on May 19,
Mitchell Engler (34) is charged with possession of a motor vehicle over $5000. RCMP have been unable to locate him and a warrant for his arrest has been issued. He is also wanted on warrants out of Blackfalds and Sundre. Engler may be in possession of weapons and should not be approached if he is seen.

The recovered property has been returned to various owners. The property was determined to have been stolen from several jurisdictions including Sherwood Park, Airdrie, Calgary, Three Hills, Carstairs, and Red Deer. Other recovered property included personal wallets.
“It’s nice to be able to return all this property to its owners and we thank the alert citizens who notified us about suspicious activity,” says Sergeant Gary MacLaren of the Southern Alberta District Crime Reduction Unit. “As long as criminals remain active, our Unit remains active and will follow up on intelligence we gather from various different sources.”
The investigation into this property crime remains ongoing.