Cutbacks from the provincial budget have not affected Carrot River’s budget. The town is planning to increase the tax dollars it collects by about 1.5 per cent.
There will be a shock to taxpayers when it comes to education tax, which is collected by the town but set by the provincial government.
That’s because residential property assessments in Carrot River have increased an average of 50 per cent. For the province, the average is 15 per cent. For business, the average increase in assessments is 65 per cent, compared to 33 per cent province-wide.
While the province has lowered the proportion of tax compared to assessed value, it has not compensated for Carrot River’s large increase. The town can – and will – make those adjustments for its taxes.
“Regardless of what we do from a municipal mill rate perspective, people’s tax bills are going to go up and who do they pay? They’re going to go to the town office and pay it,” said Kevin Trew, the town’s administrator. “That’s a big issue. That’s a big thing for us.”
In terms of cutbacks, the town will be losing around $40,000. Revenue sharing dollars the town has received from its share of one per cent of the PST has decreased from $230,000 to $208,000, because the province did not collect as much PST two years ago.
“We were preparing, because government has said this, that we were going to get a lower amount for that municipal operating grant,” Trew said. “That was no secret prior to the budget.”
The town will also receive $17,000 less this year due to the loss of grants from SaskPower and SaskEnergy. Over the province’s fiscal year of April 1 to March 31, it will lose $27,000.
Trew said he hasn’t received any correspondence from the province about the cut or what it means to Carrot River, relying on news reports.
“It has always struck me as odd that we never received any notification from the government that is this happening because they did notify us in writing our education mill rate since the budget, they have notified us in writing our municipal operating grant, but nothing about this in writing.”
Council, at its April 19 meeting, voted to send a letter to SaskPower and SaskEnergy asking if the surcharge that’s labelled as going to the town on their bills is still going to the town and if it isn’t, to remove that mention.
The final tax rates are set to be passed in May. Along with dealing with assessments, the town is also planning to change how it calculates taxes, going from a minimum tax system – where a taxpayer has to pay according to a proportion of their property’s assessed value, with a minimum that each must pay – to a base tax system, where each taxpayer pays a flat fee and then pays a certain proportion of their property’s assessed value on top of that.
