Mountain View County (MVC) council has approved an increase to the aggregate payment levy to be phased in over two years.
The move came during the recent regularly scheduled council meeting.
Effective July 2018, the levy will increase from $0.25 per tonne to $0.30, and from $0.30 to $0.40 in July 2019.
In November 2017 the province passed new legislation allowing the levy to be increased from $0.25 per tonne to $0.40 per tonne. The change was not mandatory for municipalities.
Council was scheduled on April 25 to consider an increase to $0.40 effective July 2018.
However, councillors reconsidered the matter after receiving a letter from Josh Tanasiychuk, president of Tanas Concrete in Didsbury, regarding the matter.
“The move to go from $0.25 per tonne to $0.40 per tonne is unacceptable,” said Tanasiychuk. “This equates to a 60 per cent increase in one year. This increase is significantly higher than the inflation rate and is difficult to absorb in one year.
“Giving the industry until July 1, 2018 to adjust simply isn’t long enough. For those operators who sell directly to end users, they can pass on the increase as a line item and get fully reimbursed for the increase. This is not the case for operators such as Tanas who use aggregate to make concrete.”
Tanas paid Mountain View County a total of $22,009.23 as a levy in 2017, he said, noting the change (to $0.40 per tonne) would increase that amount to $35,214.77 per year.
Coun. Angela Aalbers called for the levy to be phased in over two years.
“A 60 per cent increase in one year is too significant,” said Aalbers.
Following the vote, Reeve Beattie said phasing the increase in was a good compromise.
“I think we took some input from one of our operators (Tanasiychuk) in the county who expressed his concerned about increasing it by 60 per cent in one year and suggested we do it over time,” said Beattie.
“He suggested three years and I think we found a compromise in moving it over two years.”
Councillors passed an additional amendment to the community aggregate payment levy bylaw, setting out where the money raised through the levy is allocated.
The amended section reads: “Use of the community aggregate levy shall be in accordance with Section 409.1 of the Municipal Government Act, which mandates that the levy shall be used to raise revenue for payment of infrastructure and other costs within the municipality.”
Failing to comply with provisions of the bylaw comes with fines starting at $1,000 for a first offence.
