Mountain View County council is considering raising the average tax bill by less than 4.5 per cent compared to last year in order to collect about $35.4 million in property taxes this year.Council is expected to set the tax rates this month, after debating its municipal budget last Thursday during a policies and priorities meeting.Of the $35,494,000 proposed to be collected through property taxes this year, $24,013,000 is to support municipal operations, $11,126,000 is for the Alberta School Foundation Fund, and $400,000 is for other authorities' requisitions for waste management and seniors housing.“The public should know if there's any increase it's because of the province,” said Div. 6 councillor Paddy Munro, before voting on the recommendation.In creating its municipal budget, county councillors aimed for a zero per cent tax increase, said corporate services director Greg Wiens.In order to bring in a balanced combined operating and capital budget of $36,593,000, councillors agreed during the P&P meeting to reducing the municipal operating budget by $1.4 million, mostly through reducing contributions to reserves.Reductions were also made to fire department budgets, with the idea adjustments could be made later on, if need be.Reeve Bruce Beattie said he agreed with reducing reserve contributions, because money was still being put into them, just not as much as was originally planned.“My natural reaction is if we were drawing from reserves to keep the tax rate at zero, I wouldn't agree with that. Do I have an opinion on whether (the money) is on our bank account, or (the taxpayers') bank account, to me it should be in their bank account,” Beattie said.Under the current assumptions, Wiens says tax revenue is expected to increase by about $1,200,000 this year based on growth in the county and the average taxpayer paying the same amount of taxes as they did in 2011.But approximately $1 million of the increase is needed to support increased school tax requisitions collected by the county on behalf of the province.Because of the province's increased take this year, pegged at 8.2 per cent over last year for Mountain View County taxpayers, Wiens says it creates an overall impact in the amount of total taxes paid.If council passes the current projections, residential taxpayers could expect to pay 4.1 per cent more in total taxes while the impact on non-residential taxpayers is expected to be close to a 0.6 per cent increase.
