SUNDRE — Town council recently set reserve bids and auction dates for six properties that over the years have fallen into tax arrears.
“At the beginning of the year – we started this process back in about March – there were probably closer to 20,” Chris Albert, Town of Sundre director of corporate services, told council during a June meeting.
“They tend to get whittled down in the first part of the year, and they do get whittled down as we continue through the process.”
The tax recovery process, he added, is heavily legislated with defined timelines requiring numerous notifications to property owners.
The unpaid property taxes owed by the six properties in question date back to 2019 and 2020, he said.
“So, these are not recent,” he said. “The tax recovery process is an almost four-year process.”
And before that process can even begin, an account has to be in arrears for at least two years, he said.
“The year after they’re two years in arrears, then we register on title as that account being in arrears,” he said, adding that from there, the municipality must wait at least one year prior to initiating the tax recovery sale process, which in turn has to be completed within a year.
In other words, a municipality cannot suddenly with little notice decide to sell a property whose owner has missed only one year in taxes, he said.
“It’s a snowballing effect,” he said, adding the process had reached the point of setting reserve bids and dates for the auction.
“This is just one step in many of the tax sale process,” he said, adding owners will be further notified about the ongoing process.
“And right up until the point of tax sale, the owners still have the opportunity to bring those accounts up-to-date and to stop the process for their particular property,” he said, adding most accounts end up being settled before ever going to auction.
“I think the last time we did an actual tax sale where it went to auction, was probably about 15 years ago,” he said. “There has not been one since.”
Among the requirements outlined by legislation is to place a minimum reserve bid on the properties based on fair market value, he said.
“A common misconception is that we can auction it off just to cover our taxes,” he said. “We can’t do that.”
Council proceeded to carry six motions dealing with each individual property and set the tax sale date for Oct. 25 for each one. The highest minimum reserve bid was set at $2 million and the lowest was $120,000.
