City council amends increase to Estevan's minimum tax

ESTEVAN — The minimum tax for Estevan won't be going up by as much as initially expected.

Estevan city council approved a 33 per cent hike to the minimal tax from $750 to $1,000 during the May 26 meeting. Initially the city was looking at a 60 per cent hike to $1,200, but council opted for a lower number.

While discussing second reading of the annual bylaw to set the rate of taxation, Coun. Kirsten Walliser voiced her concerns with the minimum tax hike. She pointed out the city has long had such a system in place for residential properties to recoup costs, but it affected a handful of property owners.

"With the jump to $1,200 dollars, there will be members in our community who are facing an unanticipated almost doubling of their property tax for the year," said Walliser.

For those who aren't having a monthly payment on their property taxes, they would have less than six weeks to come up with the difference.

Coun. Brian Johnson, who was on council from 2000-2016, couldn't recall when the city brought in the minimum tax or when it reached $750. He wanted to know when it reached that amount.

"It costs 'x' amount of dollars to fix the streets, to do the snow clearing, to do the pothole patching, to do your response with the fire service, your police, your … street lighting … sidewalks; everything that's in the bundle the city offers has increased over the years," said Johnson.

He believes an increase in the minimum tax will encourage owners of vacant lots to sell them or build something.

"I have no suggestion on how we can ease the tax base for some people that may be coming in and having a hard time paying for those amounts, because if they were on a fixed income, definitely there's going to be some concerns," said Johnson.

Walliser then proposed the amendment to phase in the increase to $1,000 for 2025, with the intention of having another hike to $1,200 for next year. The shortfall to the budget would be made up through borrowing.

Since there was already a motion to give second reading to the bylaw, council had to vote on it without the amendments, with Walliser and Coun. Dave Elliott opposed. Elliott said he is concerned with the impact it would have on low-income earners, and he doesn't want to see one specific group suffer a hardship

Then council had a motion to amend the bylaw with the lower minimum tax, which passed by a 4-3 margin. Johnson, Coun. Shelly Veroba and Mayor Tony Sernick were opposed.

Council then gave third reading, with Johnson the only dissenter.

Veroba noted a lot of these homes are rental properties, and while it would likely result in a rent increase, $200 over 12 months is a little more than $16 per month.

Walliser also brought attention to the base tax, which will be $1,000 for commercial and industrial properties, but no changes were made. According to previous information from the city, 398 properties will be impacted by the base tax, while 351 properties were to be affected by the minimum tax increase when it was going up to $1,200.

Council gave first reading to the rate of taxation bylaw at its May 12 meeting. At that time, tax assessor Trina Sieben told council that due to the impact of the provincial reassessment, if council didn't take action, there would be a $1 million shortfall in the budget.

The Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency's most recent evaluation on property values came in 2023, but their findings weren't applied until this year.

Council gave second and third reading to two other bylaws. The first was for the Business Improvement District, which will generate $27,500. Veroba pointed out BID matches the amount raised. That money is mainly used for parking lots in the downtown area.

"Technically we're giving them $27,500, but in the end, when they do the improvement, it comes back to the city," said Veroba.

The library levy is expected to generate $402,000, or $37.05 per capita for the operations of the Southeast Regional Library. The city doesn't have a say in how much it allocates to the library each year.

Finally, council approved the health levy, which will generate a total of $100,000 to support the fundraising campaign to bring MRI services to St. Joseph's Hospital.