Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) officials will be appearing before Mountain County council on April 27 to discuss a number of issues, including possible tax relief for the hard-hit industry.
“I did have a phone call from CAPP,” CAO Tony Martens told councillors during the April 11 budget meeting. “They have requested to come to council on the 27th. The three items they want to talk about are state of the industry, municipal taxation, and Municipal Government Act changes.”
“We did also get a letter from an individual oil and gas company making a request for tax reduction,” he added.
The oil industry has been significantly impacted by the downturn in oil prices over the past year.
For example, there were 105 oil and gas wells drilled in Mountain View County in 2014 and five in 2015, according to the latest assessment report presented to council earlier this month.
Coun. Al Kemmere, who is also the president of the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties (AAMDC), said he has heard that many municipalities are expecting to hear from oil and gas companies and associations.
“I talked to one municipal representative and they have had seven presentations from various industry, oil and gas industry, representatives asking for a reduction because they are in such dire straights,” Kemmere said during the April 11 budget meeting.
“It is out there. And one of the items that industry has been very forceful on is the fact that prior to 1995, which is when the new Municipal Government Act was put in, we were locked in at a ratio of 1 to 2; your non-residential (tax rate) should never be any more than double of what your residential is.
“Right now we are at a 3.6 to one. So we are that much higher on our non-residential rate right now, and we will be in focus of some of these targeted discussions where they are trying to get it back down to where the residential carries a larger component of it.
“The reason I'm saying that is the fact that if we do an increase (in the 2016 budget) that doesn't show a balanced increase across, we are actually digging ourselves a deeper hole to a certain extent if there is going to be mandatory changes coming down the road in the future.”
There are some counties in the province that have a current non-residential to residential rate of 14 to 1, he said.
“The focus is we are at or above the average that is out there in the province,” he said.
Following Kemmere's comments, Reeve Bruce Beattie said, “Will they (oil and gas companies) promise to pay them (taxes) if we actually reduce them? What was it, three hundred and some odd thousand that we wrote off last year because we couldn't collect them?”
CAPP represents oil and gas companies across Canada, including many of those with operations in Mountain View and Red Deer counties.
County budget deliberations are ongoing.
The three items they want to talk about are state of the industry, municipal taxation, and Municipal Government Act changes."Tony MartensCounty CAO
