Despite the harsh economic climate, residents of Wheatland County are going to get a bit of a break on their property taxes.
The County set its mill rate and the residential tax rate has gone down from 3.795 to 3.6817. This means a homeowner with a $400,000 home will save just over $45 on their 2018 taxes. Wheatland County CAO Al Parkin says it took some work.
“We worked pretty hard as staff and council to keep the mill rate as low as we can, while still providing the service we need to provide in the county,” said Parkin. “We are in a fairly good financial position, there has been some really good stewardship over the last many years by council and staff to keep on a very solid financial footing.”
He says last year the county essentially froze the mill rate, and they were able to hold the line this year with the slight decrease in residential.
This comes in light of falling assessments, especially with the province freezing linear tax rates and Assessment Year Modifiers. These are taxes collected on infrastructure such as pipelines and power lines that run through the county.
“As an example, I think we lost $1.2 million in 2017, compared to 2016. Essentially we lost about 15 to 20 per cent of our assessment on our linear, so it is a pretty substantial hit,” he said.
Like all municipalities, they were seeing more expense in light of the carbon tax, in diesel fuel alone.
“It is really substantial when you look at it …so it gets to be quite a bit from that one item. Of course, the pricing we get from contractors is reflective of the carbon tax,” adds Parkin.
On the nonresidential rates, these saw a small increase, but he says they are still the lowest in the region for the nonresidential tax rate.
“We try not to hit the nonresidential too hard. They don’t have a vote, so sometimes there is a tendency by municipalities to hit the ones that can’t vote a little harder, but we try to keep it in balance,” he said.
Looking forward, he says the county seeing growth in residential assessments with new properties, and is seeing some commercial projects coming together.
“It really challenged us and this year we are seeing things turnaround just a little bit and we are hoping this is a sign of better things to come.”