СÀ¶ÊÓƵ

Two things property owners have come to shudder over almost as a matter of course are assessments, and the property taxes levied on those assessments. 

There is a begrudging acceptance that property taxes are required. A municipality in Saskatchewan has a rather limited range of ways it can raise dollars applying taxes on properties СÀ¶ÊÓƵ the most significant, and there is a rather long list of things they are expected to fund.  

Property owners realize there is a cost to police and fire protection, to snow removal on streets, to building and maintaining those streets and the associated sidewalks, curbs and of course the underground infrastructure to carry clean water to us, and to take sewage away. And, the list goes on when you begin to add the amenities we have come to expect, from public libraries to ball diamonds and skating rinks. 

The municipality in essence does the work, and local taxpayers pay the bills. 

And like most things we understand the costs of doing most things go up, and that means so too must property taxes – at least until as a community we begin to say it’s too much and accept that maybe we don’t need snow removed from streets in residential areas, or youth have to pay the full cost of recreational facility use, or grass on boulevards doesn’t need cut – but we don’t appear to be at that point yet so taxes inch up. 

Yes, the City of Yorkton managed a zero per cent increase in overall property taxes in 2020, a response largely due to COVID-19, but holding the line for more than the odd year just isn’t in the cards if the municipality is to keep pace with what needs doing. 

While the tax situation might at least be accepted and generally understood, the assessment of property values on which taxes is applied is far less so. 

Assessments are determined in a number of ways through the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency (SAMA).  

The goal of assessments, which are renewed every four years is to establish a representative value of a property at a particular point in time. In the case of the latest assessment that point in time was Jan. 1, 2019. 

The issue is however, that through SAMA’s process assessments over a four-year period can see massive swings and some properties go up in value and some of course decline. 

For the ones that take massive jumps, the resulting property taxes levied go way up too, and since it is an unforeseen increase it hits budgets hard whether it’s a property home owner or a business property owner.  

It leaves taxpayers scrambling to wedge a big tax increase into budgets, and it leaves them unexpectedly unhappy, which municipal Councillors hear about, so they look for ways to mitigate the tax jumps – as in the case locally where all 2020 commercial tax changes, whether up, or down, will be phased in over the next three years. The overall increase will still hit, but commercial property owners get three years to adjust budgets. 

But the bigger question is how to deal with the huge assessment swings. If SAMA looks at the data and that data suggests a swing in assessment it would suggest that perhaps the system needs tweaked, although for the vast majority of properties in the last assessment value changes were modest, and we know properties go up and down in value over time based on a range of factors. 

And therein lies the problem, adjusting an assessment system which appears mostly broken for only a few. That is not to belittle the impact they feel as a result of huge increases in assessment, but finding a solution to their particular concerns is likely only possible with a mandated exception based on some criteria created politically at the provincial level.