Province decreasing what they’ll pay in property taxes to municipalities

The Alberta government is decreasing the amount of money they give to municipalities in place of property taxes to reduce some financial burden.

The province said they’ll provide a grant for 75 per cent of the property tax costs in the 2019-20 tax year for the buildings they control in Bonnyville in a letter sent from Alberta Municipal Affairs to the Town.

That Grant in Place of Taxes will decrease next year to 50 per cent.

The Town wrote off the remaining $7600, but it was not welcome news to council who will end up eating the cost.

“The province has come back and said, ‘we’re the higher level of authority, we created you municipalities, we can actually make the rules and you know what, we believe in paying taxes, everybody in Alberta has to pay property taxes to the municipalities and everyone has to pay personal taxes to the province..but when it comes time for the province to pay taxes, oh no, no, no, we don’t have to do that,'” said Mayor Gene Sobolewski.

“We’re only going to pay what we decide we want to pay…is it a large amount of money? No. Is it going to break our budget? No. It’s the principle of it.

“They’ve systematically reduced the grants in place or eliminated certain buildings.”

There are ways for municipalities to apply for full payment which include municipalities where Grants in Place of Taxes is greater than five per cent, where there are outstanding 2018-19 properties, and properies where the Government of Alberta is the lessee.

When discussing the provincial budget, Mayor Craig Copeland highlighted this issue – a familiar one at that.

“We’ve had that for years with the federal government on the PILT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes), so welcome to our world…We’re owed millions of dollars on the dispute with the federal government on the base. We’ve been fighting that for a long, long time. Could you imagine if Canadians decided not to pay their full share of income tax?” he said.

“The province is allowed to do that, but it really impacts the municipalities. The municipalities are really stretched. We operate at around eight cents of every taxpayer dollar that runs the municipalities…we’re at the bottom.

“You’ve got the feds, you’ve got the province. And everybody seems to be taking pieces out of the municipal hands and the big decision that councils around Alberta are going to be faced with is are they getting increased property taxes?”

In a letter sent to the M.D. of Bonnyville from Kaycee Madu, Minister of Municipal Affairs, he said:

“Government needs to reduce operating spending while still providing municipalities a share of the cost of municipal services to Crown properties.

“We have made some challenging decisions to get our fiscal house in order to ensure we have reliable funding for public services in the future.”