Seniors tax deferral program on City’s radar

Prince Albert is looking into the possibility of bringing a seniors tax deferral program to this city.

Such programs essentially have the municipal taxes on a resident’s property paid on their behalf for each year they own their home until they sell it. Mayor Greg Dionne said the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) has been looking into this for years, and the City of Lloydminster has already implemented it.

Dionne said what the City will be looking into is the cost to carry the program if it doesn’t find a bank to back the program, which he said is essentially like a reverse mortgage. The aim is to keep seniors in their homes longer.

“What happens is, you sign up for it, you don’t pay your taxes, they’re charged at an interest rate. They’re put on by lien onto your title and then whenever you pass on and it goes to the estate or whatever, the taxes are paid,” he said at Monday’s executive committee meeting.

He said administration will also look at how many properties the program could serve in the City. As well, the report would look at the Lloydminster model.

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In Saskatoon, there’s such a program in place, which has faced hurdles, as Dionne explained. He said the City of Saskatoon is looking at changing their model.

“One of the hurdles is the last thing that your parents have to give you is their home. And they want to give it free title,” Dionne said.

The discussion came as the executive committee reviewed the tax tool recommendations made by City administration.

The City is no longer looking at a 2.3 per cent tax increase – the 2015 tax increase has been revised to 2.57 per cent. A recalculation of the numbers by the financial services department led to the slight upward revision.

At the same time, the Pineview Terrace Lodge base tax will disappear from commercial and residential property owners’ bills. For homeowners, this means the $27 charge will go away and for business owners, $120 to $1,200 will be removed from their tax bills.

But the 2015 tax policy may be even kinder to some business owners. The City has redesigned its commercial base tax tiers in response to feedback it received from businesses.

“What we had heard from a lot of commercial property owners, both through council and from those property owners themselves was that a lot of the smaller commercial property owners had felt their taxes had increased quite a bit over the last few years, especially because of the base taxes,” financial services director Joe Day said.

He said that when the City took a closer look, administration realized there was a higher tax rate put on these property owners than on some of the bigger properties.

Administration suggested a different tiering that the base tax applies to, and Day said what is now happening is that some of the taxation is being shifted from the lower-valued commercial properties to the higher-valued commercial properties.

With council poised to approve the tax policy at next week’s meeting, Dionne lauded this budget cycle. He called it one of the most open and public ones the City’s had.

“We’ve achieved our goal, we have a very low rate. Look at Saskatoon’s,” he said, pointing to that city’s proposed tax increase of more than seven per cent.

Dionne feels that Prince Albert will end up with “the lowest rate in the province.”  He said the majority of commercial property owners will actually see their taxes decrease next year as a result of the base tax adjustment.

He said that every Friday, he makes an effort to go out to four or five businesses to find out what their issues are – and the taxation issue was one of them.

“And so we listened. And we have responded.”

The 2015 budget and tax policy will very likely be finalized on Dec. 8, ahead of the end of the calendar year. The 2013 and 2014 budgets were both settled in the early months of the years they were to apply to.

Dionne said settling the budget now is one of the reasons the tax increase is as low as it is – because the City will realize the savings it will have with staff issuing tenders in the early months of 2015.

“And then, when you tender at that time of year, you’re going to get the best price, because they want your job. When you tender it late in the year, they’re already booked. So then they’re trying to slot you in. So, if you get it earlier, you get better prices. So we even … hope to have better news in 2016.”

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames