Mountain View County council has passed the 2018 tax rate bylaw, setting a one per cent rate hike across all categories.
The move came by way of motion at the April 11 council meeting.
Reeve Bruce Beattie says although council also considered a two per cent increase, councillors eventually settled on one per cent.
“We looked at our numbers from the budget, where our costs were, where staff had found ways to minimize or be efficient,” said Beattie. “We are confident that even with the one per cent increase we are still able to balance our budget with a small contribution towards our tax reserve fund. That gives us the opportunity to meet unexpected events.
“I think the basis for the decision from council is, let’s leave as much money as we can within the hands of the taxpayer. We don’t need to take any more than we need.”
Property taxes are collected to pay for municipal operations, for the Alberta School Foundation Fund (ASFF) requisition, for designated industrial property and seniors' housing commissions.
The farmland tax rate is 8.18 for a tax levy of $1,284,492, while the residential rate is 2.87 for a tax levy of $6,575,028.
The tax rate is 10.19 for the machinery and equipment, non-residential, non-residential co-generation, non-residential linear, non-residential railway.
The ASFF residential and farmland rate is 2.54, and the non-residential rate is 3.79. The Mountain View Seniors’ Housing rate is 0.17.
Councillors also passed the 2018 budget, which calls for total expenditures of $21,960,345, and capital expenses of $26,733,920.
During council discussions on the tax rate bylaw and the budget, Deputy Reeve Angela Aalbers, the chair of the county’s audit committee, called for the one per cent increase.
“I think it achieves everything we are trying to do,” said Aalbers.
Reeve Beattie said, “We are still putting money into reserves even at the one per cent and we’ve also allocated a one per cent contingency across the organization, so I think that provides us some comfort with the levels of reserves we have in place.”
Following the votes on the budget and tax rate, Aalbers said “lots of deliberations” went into coming up with the 2018 budget.
“Originally council had talked about two per cent because we did the large increase to funding our rural municipalities, but with some of the efficiencies we found in operations, I felt that it was important to pass those efficiencies back onto the residents.”
Coun. Greg Harris did not attend the April 11 council meeting.
