County of Barrhead property owners will see an increase in their property tax bill due to a uniform mill rate increase.
On April 17, councillors unanimously approved its 2018 operating and capital budgets and reeve Doug Drozd said it was a modest budget.
Council adopted the 2018 operating budget with both revenues and expenses of $15,775,555, resulting in a balanced budget with neither a surplus nor deficit.
To balance the budget, the municipal mill rate was increased by 0.15 mills and $172,419 will be utilized from unrestricted reserves.
The 2018 mill rate for residential properties is set at 6.0520, an increase of 0.15 per cent, while non-residential has been set at 17.2512 and farmland, at 16.7113 mills, both of which increase by 0.15 per cent from 2017. County CAO Debbie Oyarzun said last year’s budget was approved with a 0.20 mill rate increase and council utilized $145,731 in unrestricted reserves.
The school portion of residential tax rates for residential properties and farmland has increased to 2.5694 mills, up from 2.4884 and the school portion of the tax rate for non-residential properties decreased to 3.6090, up from 4.0010 mills last year.
The Barrhead and District Social Housing Association requisition totals $105,729, an increase of 4.5 per cent from the previous year. In addition, the total Alberta School Foundation Fund and Evergreen School requisition from Alberta Education is $2,494,721, an increase of 2.4 per cent and the Municipal Affairs-designated properties requisition, a new component of requisitions, amounts to $6,301.
“It is a small portion under property taxes for designated properties and it is with respect to a hybrid agreement that we have for designated properties. We provide this to Municipal Affairs for doing the assessment of these types of properties and are required by MA to put this dollar value back onto their assessments,” Oyarzun said.
With the completion of the arbitration process and a new recreation agreement in place, county taxpayers will notice a new line item in their tax bills, says Oyarzun.
“Because the arbitrator approved our funding model and that model is now reflected in our budget, under the [recreation?] agreement we are able to put the mill rate on the tax assessment,” she said.
The town recreation component for 2018 is $624,476 and the county’s assessment increased to $940 million.
The property tax rate for that is 0.6637 mills and will be identified on the tax statements our ratepayers receive, Oyarzun said.
“You’ll be able to see what portion of your tax goes to the rec component of the budget. It works out to about $66.37 per $100,000 of assessment.”
