BOWDEN -- Town councillors have expressed interest in possibly making use of a proposed new law that would allow Alberta municipalities to offer tax breaks for up to 15 years to businesses that are looking at setting up in the community.
Bill 7, the Municipal Government (Property Tax Incentives) Amendment Act, was introduced in early June. A Municipal Affairs spokesman says the legislation has passed second reading. He anticipates it will become law in the next two or three weeks.
Under the proposed amendments, municipalities would be able to decide on how long, and to whom they would offer tax breaks.
They could be offered to new or existing businesses, certain industries or neighbourhoods for a maximum of 15 years.
Other jurisdictions like B.C., Saskatchewan, Texas and Louisiana have similar multi-year municipal tax incentives.
However, the Opposition says most of those new taxation powers are already allowed under the Municipal Government Act.
Chief administrative officer Greg Skotheim raised the idea during council's June 10 meeting.
"I'm not saying anything here. It just gives us an option," he said. "If the right company ever came to town, we could — let's say we were bidding against Innisfail or one of these other places — well that's something we could look at."
Coun. Carol Pion, chair of the community’s Economic Development Committee, said the committee has already discussed the idea of doing something like that.
"We need to be prepared. Whenever it comes, we need to have that at our readiness to give them that information, because it can happen in the blink of an eye, whether they make the decision to stay or go," she said.
Mayor Robb Stuart and Coun. Kerry Kelm agreed.
"If they could see for some foreseeable future that they've got those incentives, right? Like you say, one year at a time, they never know next year what's going to happen, so this way, they could plan. It would be much better," Kelm said.
Skotheim did add a word of caution, though.
"It's also hard too. You don't want to saddle a future council with a decision that you made," he said, adding, "but it's just for information."
After council, Stuart was asked if he fears Bowden getting into a "race to the bottom" in which municipalities compete with each other for businesses, offering better and better deals, resulting in lower and lower revenue for municipalities.
"Yeah," Stuart said. "And certain ones will thrive in certain communities. Like, Olds has done just stupendous, right? They've done a very good job of marketing. And as far as I know, they don't have very much land now available for purchase.
"And we don't have any land ourselves. We've got one lot down here, I think, is all the town actually owns. We have a bunch of vacant lots that are privately owned," he said.
