City warns school taxes to go up by average of 27.4%

Weyburn city council is warning residents of imminent increases in school taxes due to the provincial property reassessment process.

City-wide, the total increase to school taxes will come to nearly $1.2 million and will come to an average increase of 27.4 per cent across all property classes.

"The provincial reassessment process is one over which we have absolutely no control but, since it is the City that issues education tax notices, we unfortunately have to be the bearers of bad news," said City Director of Finance Jon Michaud.

The provincial government mandates the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency (SAMA) to conduct periodic revaluations of all Saskatchewan properties. The current revaluation was completed in 2013 using the 2011 base year. Provincial legislation requires municipalities to use these values when determining school taxes.
Since the 2009 evaluation, the province of Saskatchewan has experienced unprecedented growth in property values. Weyburn in particular, has experienced growth in property values much higher than the provincial average.

"The good side is that Weyburn is enjoying an historic level of prosperity. Many property owners will have seen their net worth jump dramatically because their homes are worth more than four years ago. But the downside is that with prosperity and higher real estate values comes higher education taxes," said Michaud.

"We certainly understand that this will be a difficult adjustment and, again, since this is a matter of provincial jurisdiction, there is unfortunately nothing we can do to mitigate it. The one thing we can do to is to provide rate-payers with as much information as possible. We will be sending out notices and posting information on our website. As well, I have asked our city officials to make one-on-one contact with as many of the most acutely affected property owners as we can reach before the notices go out," said Mayor Debra Button.

Mayor Button encouraged all property-owners to visit the SAMA reassessment website at www.sama.sk.ca/html/3/revaluations.html and to stay tuned to the city website for further information.

For more information, contact: Jon Michaud at [email protected] or Brenna Keeler at [email protected].