Candle Lake beach on Canada Day. (Submitted Photo/Candle Lake Parks and Recreation Committee)

By Susan McNeil

Resort Village of Candle Lake

Candle Lake prepares for upcoming season, building and tariff impact

Mar 20, 2025 | 2:47 PM

Between trade wars, provincial budgets, managing growth and its own budget, the Resort Village of Candle Lake has a busy season coming up.

Chief Administrative Officer Brent Lutz told paNOW that the village welcomed the announcement in Wednesday’s provincial budget that a new visitor’s centre is to be built in the provincial park that surrounds the village.

“Obviously, the provincial park isn’t in our municipality,” he said, “but it certainly serves people that come to visit Candle Lake and it will employ people and continue to provide better services.”

Better services encourage more visitors to the park and the village, which is good for both parties.

Closer to home, the village council has their 2025 budget on the agenda for Friday’s regular meeting.

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Lutz said they have tried their best to not have a tax hike for property owners.

Village staff have been looking at the results of the new assessments and Lutz said there is an average 17 per cent increase in value of residential properties.

The provincial budget promised to reduce the education mill rate that the province levies.

“The province has announced that they are adjusting the residential class education rate something less than six per cent down but for use, we’re going to see over 10 per cent increase in the education tax levy,” he said.

A decision on the municipal mill rate is also before council tomorrow.

“The council here is proposing we adjust our mill rate for municipal taxes so that the total taxes we collect will be the same as last year,” Lutz said.

Last year, the mill rate was set at 3.1 and the proposal is to lower it to 2.6 which would allow the resort village to still collect the same amount of tax revenue.

That would allow for most homes to have about the same bill as last year.

“Well, they said they’ve reduced the rate, and they have, but they’ve increased the value of the property,” he said. “It’s a grab of an additional $250,000 which is considerable for a community our size.”

When it comes to tariffs and recent provincial direction that municipalities look for Canadian companies first when it comes to procurement, Lutz is unsure as yet how that will affect the two major projects planned for the year.

The Village wants to complete renovation of their Community Centre and spend $7 million to expand their lagoon.

“Those projects are already what we would consider underway,” said Lutz. “Our understanding at this point is they’re not affected by the pause and so we will continue to work on that.”

Time will tell how the prices of replacements for equipment will be affected. Some purchases might have to wait until ‘things calm down’.

The village will look to buy replacements as fast as possible if they are available within budget but Lutz expects that other municipalities will be doing the same.

Another major project that is still in the early stages is the creation of a 55+ housing project that would provide options for people who want to remain in the village after they retire.

Phase one would be 10 purpose-built rental townhouses or row housing.

A memorandum of understanding is also on the agenda to move forward with the sale of some land to Zaks Building Group and their partner Claystone Developments.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com

On BlueSky: @susanmcneil.bsky.social