Craig Gilbert | [email protected]
Now just hang on a doggone minute.
It was two months before Hostelling International managers joined Parks Canada and Municipality of Jasper brass for a gold-shovelled and smile-heavy sod turning in a bouldery, uneven lot in the shadow of the Home Hardware on Sleepy Hollow Road.
April 2018, or so the records indicate.
The town emails HI delivering the unhappy news that its councillors’ intended to strip it of its tax exempt status.
Now fast forward to 3:49 p.m. last Friday. The location is Jasper CAO Mark Fercho’s email inbox. Appearing as if by magic is an exasperated sounding message from Robb Cryder, the chief operating officer for HI’s Pacific region, possibly in reaction to our more recent reports about town council making moves to do what they said they would two Aprils ago.
“I request that this vote be postponed until HI Pacific Mountain Region has an opportunity to present its case to staff and council,” he wrote. “Our association has just invested approximately $12 million in the new hostel and staff accommodation in Jasper and that (sic) an expedited process is denying us this opportunity (sic) is wrong.”
Mayor Richard Ireland didn’t take kindly to the implication.
“They’ve had 14 or 15 months to be before us if they wanted to,” he said. “I don’t see that we’ve ever denied them any opportunity.”
Non-profit hostels are exempted from municipal taxation by provincial law unless the presiding town or city council passes a bylaw changing their status.
Johanne Roy of the Jasper Downtown Hostel wrote to council last week.
“As a comparable business model, we … duly pay our municipal taxes and feel it is important that businesses do contribute to the municipal tax base,” Roy wrote. “We see no difference between their services and ours (and) the new location within the municipality of Jasper has the potential for over 150 people per day using the facilities and put a demand on the infrastructure of Jasper as it is not a ‘back country’ hostel anymore.”
Jasper councillors were apparently in a mood to send a message to HI that they were going to control the timeline, and voted the tax status bylaw through first reading 7-0.
The bylaw will come back for second reading at the next regular meeting of council, which isn’t until August.
Coun. Paul Butler said that should give HI managers enough time to prepare to present their case.
