Peter Shokeir | [email protected]
Jasper Municipal Council approved the 2021-2025 capital budget but held off on approving its 2021 operating budget during its regular meeting on April 6.
The proposed budget presents a COVID Recovery Strategy, allocating $1 million of funding towards a tax credit that would be applied against municipal property taxes.
The strategy also includes $775,000 in funding to support more targeted recovery in the form of a COVID relief reserve.
Councillors Paul Butler and Rico Damota both warned that the operating budget increased by nearly $1 million and how the $775,000 in relief funding ought to be used to mitigate taxes in 2022.
“I’ve never felt so conflicted about passing a budget in the past and I feel uncomfortable even now voting against a budget that has received so much consideration,” Butler said.
Mayor Richard Ireland cautioned that the operating budget needed to be approved soon so tax notices could be sent out by June.
Council is expected to reconsider the budget on April 20.
Butler said he would use the two weeks until then to come up with amendments designed to mitigate the increase for the operating budget.
He specifically noted departmental increases and some in administration.
Hotel sector drops in assessed value
Jasper’s hotel sector lost $35 million in assessed value in 2020, a decrease of nine per cent, whereas total non-residential decreased by five per cent.
Troy Birtles, assessment co-ordinator with Accurate Assessment Group, told council during a presentation that hotel properties had strong market values leading up to COVID but slumped soon after.
“Had we relied only on the current year’s data, the hotel assessments would have dropped far more than they did,” Birtles said.
“But because we had a blended three-year average, we were able to mitigate that loss.”
This weighted average over three years has been employed in Jasper for years and is used to mitigate against large spikes and drops in assessment.
Most properties within the Jasper townsite either did not change or only had slight increases or decreases.
“When COVID became part of our lives, people thought market values were going to tumble,” Birtles said.
“From a residential perspective, that simply did not happen. Didn’t happen in Jasper, didn’t happen in any other areas of the province that I work in.”
As for non-residential, Birtles said it was consistent with other areas of the province with some experiencing bigger decreases in their hotel sector than Jasper.
