Lola Barta, director of finance's for the City of Medicine Hat outlined the 2022 Property Tax proposal in a presentation to council Monday night.--NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
For the first time in three years, property tax will be increasing in the city.
Medicine Hat city council were given a presentation for the 2022 property tax bylaw at Monday night’s council meeting that will see an overall increase of $107 per year or $8.92 a month on the median home, which is assessed at $289,100.
The bylaw to authorize council to impose a property tax for the year 2022 was passed unanimously by eight members of council in attendance. Coun. Allison Knodel was the only councillor not in attendance.
The median assessment change for single-family residential housing is 3.3 per cent, with individual homeowners seeing various amounts depending on change in assessment of their property. Non-residential property’s median assessment change is at 0 per cent from 2021.
Director of finance Lola Barta’s presentation outlined the tax proposal to council; and where Medicine Hat residents’ tax dollars are used and the net cost in relation to each resident. A few examples provided were the net costs of $303 per resident for police, $223 for fire and emergency services, $147 for municipal works and more.
“Property taxes are not a fee for service but a way of distributing the cost for local government services,” Barta said in her presentation to council.
City council received three scenarios for tax distribution and tax ratios with the proposed scenario aimed at spreading the increased 3.4 per cent tax rate across single family, multi-family and non-residential. The municipal tax rate increased 3.4 per cent, with the overall tax rate going up 4.9 per cent.
Coun. Darren Hirsch, who was in attendance virtually Monday night, asked what council could do to help businesses who saw property assessments go down at the same time their tax rates rose.
“We had business owners who were really affected during COVID and now the assessments on their properties have went down because the revenue of their businesses within those buildings have ultimately went down,” Hirsch said. “So I am a bit concerned that we are applying a tax increase to them … I am going to support it (the bylaw) but I do want to look at options available where we could perhaps create a one-time subsidy to support stores.”
Coun. Robert Dumanowski also shared concern for non-residential properties and the trend of increased tax ratio.
“It’s something to keep on top of and certainly we will do our best to monitor that in the future,” Dumanowski said.
Barta said they are expecting the loss will be temporary and said the ratio should be coming down in “future years.”
Dennis Egert, managing director of corporate services, gave a video presentation Monday night on the city chief financial officer’s report, including corporate strategy and annual performance with a financial health check.
The appropriation of property tax revenue for the city’s 2022 operational budget was measured at $80,783,000. The education portion of property tax revenue increased $1,254,335 for 2022 as a result of: a 2021 collection shortfall of $615,029 and the 2022 provincial education requisition increase of $639,306 for a total increase of 7.6 per cent and $1,869,364 total from 2021.
