The City of Yorkton might have achieved a zero per cent increase on the municipal side of property taxes, but since 2021 is a re-evaluation year in terms of property assessment Yorkton Council approved a number of moves to mitigate the impact of those value changes.聽
While our residential properties typically lost value, not all of them lost value at the same rate. Some neighborhoods had values hold rather than decrease, and some saw values decrease at a larger rate. Further to this, we have condos and apartments whose values often saw some increase or did not decrease by the average, explained Ashley Stradeski 鈥� Director of Financewith the City at the regular meeting of Yorkton Council Monday.聽
Our goal was to minimize the impact within the residential sector, especially given that this was a year with a zero percent increase to taxation revenue, he added.聽
The first step was to have Council approve a $35 hike in the base tax from $795 to $830 on all residential properties.聽
鈥淭he base tax is a tax tool that we have as a Municipality that allows us to set a rate that is charged equally to all households. Upon doing so, we can guarantee that no matter the value of any property, we will collect a certain amount from them before applying the mill rates to the property value. This amount in its total will allow us to subtract it from the total tax needed and thus have a lower mill rate overall,鈥� detailed a report circulated to Council.聽
However, some residential properties will be getting relief from the base tax too.聽
Council approved reducing the base tax on high-density multi-unit residential to 85 per cent.聽
鈥淐urrently we grant a 10 per cent discount to both taxes and base taxes on high-density residential, with any buildings over seven units falling into this category. As part of this revaluation, we are seeing that some of these are the properties with the biggest swing in values and thus taxes, even after applying the increased base tax discussed above. As such, to mitigate this we are proposing to reduce the base tax rate from 90 per cent to 85 per cent for high-density multi-unit residential properties,鈥� detailed the circulated report.聽
With regards to commercial properties, we are proposing mill rates that are revenue neutral on the whole, with the goal of mitigating swings in individual subclasses, said Stradeski.聽
鈥淚deally, we would like to move to a system where most of the commercial rates are all the same, such that property owners pay the same based on value 鈥� currently some properties may be worth the same, but pay different rates of tax depending on whether they are general commercial, warehouse, industrial and so forth. We have attempted to bring these more in line this year, however avoided any significant shifts that would affect any property owners too much from a tax perspective,鈥� noted the report.聽
Administration鈥檚 intent is to send out tax notices before the end of June 2021 with a payment due date of September 30, 2021 to avoid any penalties.
