The president of the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties (AAMDC) has given Mountain View County council an update on the ongoing efforts to update the Municipal Government Act.
Al Kemmere, who is also a Mountain View County (MVC) councillor, gave the update during the recent regularly scheduled council meeting.
The Modernized Municipal Government Act (Bill 21) was given first reading on May 31. The act is the overriding legislation that guides all municipal governments in Alberta.
Both the provincial government and the AAMDC are conducting public hearings as part of the process to come up with the regulations for the updated legislation.
In his update to council, Kemmere told councillors that linear assessment and taxation are bring left unchanged in the updated legislation.
Linear taxes are assessed on industrial infrastructure such as pipelines and electrical powerlines. Revenue generated through the taxation is currently collected in the jurisdiction where the infrastructure is located, mostly in rural Alberta.
Millions of dollars are generated by linear taxation and are used to finance infrastructure such as roads and bridges at the local level.
There have been calls for linear taxation to be distributed on a per capita basis, which would mean much more for major cities and much less for rural communities.
“Linear assessment and taxation is being left with the jurisdiction where it is located and where the impacts are felt,” Kemmere said.
“The split-non residential mill rate will provide tools for small business development, however the government of Alberta will set the criteria to guide this in the regulations so there is a significant unknown here.”
The updated legislation includes no change in the agriculture regulated assessment.
“(That) is a positive for our ag operators and also allows for a reduced impact on our education property tax requisition. Ag residential exemption remains unchanged also,” he said.
The updated role and authority of the ombudsman is a concern, he said.
“While the intent is to provide ‘administrative fairness' for the public, which means they will have the power to review decisions that are made that fall outside of policy, I can see there will be a load of reviews coming if they don't have a clear criteria, which is supposed to be outlined in the regulations,” he said.
Inter-municipal collaborative frameworks (ICF) are coming with some fairly restrictive timelines,” he said.
“We will have two years to develop the agreements or the arbitration process will begin which will have to be completed within the next year,” he said.
“As it stands presently MVC will have to complete an agreement with every municipality it shares a border with (rural and urban). Some will be simple and some quite a process, but again what needs to be included in these agreements will be in the regulations.”
There are concerns with the province taking over centralized industrial assessment under the updated legislation, he said.
“The province is taking this over which means they will have to staff up and some municipalities may have to make some staffing decisions,” he said.
“It is still not clear how they will define ‘industrial property' and will it include all commercial property or just specific type of property with restricted uses. Again the regulations will spell this out in the future.”
In summing up his comments about the ongoing review process for the updated legislation, Kemmere said, “the big concern is how will the regulations look and how do you properly understand the implications of the amendments without the regulations.
“It appears our members are generally quite happy with what we see presently but at the same time there is a concern with some of the unknowns.
“We must remember that there are two more readings of the act and the minister (of Municipal Affairs) assured us that there will be value in the consultation and that we can expect further amendments as the process unfolds, so with that in mind our efforts to support local decision making and revenues to be directed to where the activity takes place must be emphasized along with the support for good collaborative agreements.”
The official Opposition Wildrose Party is also conducting consultations regarding Bill 21.
The AAMDC represents 69 rural municipalities, including Red Deer and Mountain View counties.
"Linear assessment and taxation is being left with the jurisdiction where it is located and where the impacts are felt.Al KemmereAADMC president and county councillor
