SUNDRE — Council declined a request from Mountain View Seniors’ Housing (MVSH) to provide a tax exemption on the Sundre Seniors Supportive Living centre’s life lease units.
Chris Albert, director of corporate services, reminded council during an early December teleconference council meeting that the matter had previously been brought before council last January, when the municipality received correspondence from the non-profit organization regarding the taxation of their life lease units.
“We did give them information on how to proceed based on what they wanted to do,” said Albert, adding a request to exempt the units from municipal taxes was subsequently submitted.
While that’s an option council could choose, he said administration’s position to decline the request remained unchanged.
“We have checked with Municipal Affairs,” he said, adding life lease units are categorized similarly to condominium units.
Additionally, “any sort of exemption will have to be borne by the remaining taxpayers in the municipality,” he said.
A similar request from MVSH was also submitted to the Town of Olds for the organization’s life lease units in that municipality, whose council decided against the exemption, he said.
Coun. Rob Wolfe moved that council decline the request, and to direct administration to inform MVSH about the decision.
Coun. Richard Warnock advocated to approve the request.
“This is a tough one for the residents that are in these life lease facilities because of the cost of being there. And when they add the taxes on top of that, it makes it cost prohibitive for a lot of people,” said Warnock.
“It does hurt the seniors.”
However, as a member of the board of directors who voted in favour of the request being brought before Sundre and Olds councils, Warnock erred on the side of caution with regards to a potential perception of bias, and thus abstained from the vote.
Coun. Paul Isaac, who spoke in favour of the motion, pointed out Warnock technically did not stand to personally benefit from the decision and felt his colleague could have participated in the vote, but understood Warnock’s concern.
Coun. Todd Dalke also spoke in favour of the motion.
“We have had to stand firm with all of our other ratepayers. The rules are the rules and the policies are in place for a reason,” he said, adding those rules are important for council to follow “so that way we don’t create a line that becomes vague or blurry.”
Mayor Terry Leslie said council needs to be consistent, and would have to be prepared to explain itself to other residents whose recent application for similar tax exemption requests was denied if MVSH’s request was approved.
The motion carried unopposed.
