The Redford Conservatives' 2013-14 provincial budget threw much higher education-linked property tax burdens on high-growth communities, a move that has some mayors "shocked."
The budget removed a program that capped the rate of tax shifts toward communities with high assessment values. The result: property owners in places like Chestermere, a Calgary bedroom community, and Fort McMurray, Alberta's oilsands capital, will pay much larger property tax bills in 2013.
Chestermere Mayor Patricia Matthews is not impressed.
"We were shocked to learn of the massive increase on the education portion of this year's property tax bill," said Matthews. "To spring a $400 addition on the average person's bill, without warning, isn't fair."
Wood Buffalo Mayor Melissa Blake went further in criticizing the tax shift, which will heap another $16.3 million in taxes on her region's property owners, $9.4 million of which will come from residential property owners, not oilsands plants and mines.
"As a direct result of the province's consistent inability to release land to our municipality in a timely and realistic manner, real estate prices in Wood Buffalo are the highest in the province - a situation directly due to the artificial shortage created by the province," Blake charged.
The shift will hike the education portion of residential bills by almost 43 per cent, according to Wood Buffalo officials.
from Western Investor June 2013
