Municipality will vote to approve average 1.7% tax increase

Jasperites will see a 1.7 per cent average tax increase for 2009, which is about half the consumer price index, which measures purchasing power for households. 

“Our rate of tax increases are favourable compared to the consumer price index,” said municipal manager George Krefting. 

Council will likely read for the third and final time, bylaw 119 that establishes tax rates, at the May 19 general council meeting. 

The three components that make up the total 1.7 per cent tax increase are education taxes, municipal taxes and Evergreens Foundation requisitions. When approving the municipal tax increase for the 2009 budget, which was 2.9 per cent, council’s priority was to maintain the current level of service with as small a tax increase as possible. 

According to Krefting, the education tax decreased, which offset the higher Evergreens requisition. The education tax has been on a downward trend since 2004, but Krefting predicts that it’s bottoming out. As a result, our “favourable” tax increases compared with the consumer price index over the past five years is unsustainable, said Krefting, but the municipality is “still looking for other revenue sources besides just taxes and user fees, he added. 

“I strongly believe that we’re being shortchanged by the federal and provincial governments,” said Krefting. “We don’t get any of the income tax, we don’t get any of the sales tax... that’s the kind of taxes I believe that we need so that we don’t have to be depending so heavily on user fees and municipal taxes,” he said. 

The tax increase, however, does not affect all properties equally and depends on property assessment values. Some properties will see a tax increase, such as those on Aspen Crescent, which will see an average 10.5 per cent tax increase. Other properties will see a decrease from last year, such as the Southview Coop, which will see a 6.1 per cent decrease and the homes at Lake Edith that will see a 9.6 per cent tax decrease. 

Although the tax rates vary year-to-year and property-to-property, Krefting emphasizes looking at the long-term. During the past four years, the Southview Coop has seen the most significant average tax decrease of 10.4 per cent and the mobile homes have seen the largest average increase of 7.4 per cent. Other than the Southview Coop, which is not a typical property given that assessments are now based on the actual trading value and not market value, the properties seeing the most significant tax decrease over the last four years have been at Lake Edith. 

The in-town hotels received a 23.6 per cent average tax increase in 2008, but their taxes will be reduced 4.8 per cent in 2009 and the average four year tax increase for in-town hotels is 5.1 per cent. 

The tax distribution for 2009 will be 30 per cent residential and 70 per cent commercial. This distribution is consistent with what people voted for in 2001, said Krefting. “Certainly we know the desire” by non-residential properties to pay less, said Krefting, but commercial tax payers “saw large decreases from 2001 to 2002 when the previous land rent regime was eliminated,” he said. Krefting also added that Jasper’s residential-commercial tax split has been “coming down” as other municipalities are “going up.”