Council Says Yes to Tax Rate
Tuesday, May 7, 2013 @ 4:32 AM
Prince George, B.C.- It is no surprise, Prince George City Council has approved the tax rates for 2013. These are the same rates approved by the Committee of the Whole last month.
Councillor Albert Koehler wants to know why Council can’t set the tax rate first, before getting into budget discussions. “That way we would be forced to live with what we have, and end this never ending spiralling tax rate.”
Councillor Brian Skakun says if Councillor Koehler supported any of the items that have contributed to the tax increases he shouldn’t be saying no to the tax rate “at this late hour”. The tax rate has to be set by mid May. Councillor Koehler countered that he had not supported anything that would increase the tax rate.
Councillor Cameron Stolz says he believes Council has done a wonderful job of controlling spending, “We did the best with what we have” and noted the increase has more to do with increasing the levy for road repairs and the new levy for an infrastructure reserve.
Here is how it will impact the different property classifications, keep in mind, the amounts shown are per one thousand dollars of assessment:
So when combined, the tax rate per thousand dollars of assessment for a residential property owner in Prince George will be $9.004. That does not include the school taxes.
Comments
Would they ever say no?
Stolz says council did a wonderful job controlling spending. All from the guy who was hell bent to spend 10 million dollars on an unneeded dike.
these clowns need to go. Im sure that most of city council could not operate a lemonade stand yet alone a city. Im tired of my tax dollars being wasted. witnessed 2 city workers make sure the manhole covers move then 2 more come down to spray paint the covers. 4 peoples wages to do that only 1000 dollars a day or so. just one example but look at the waste of money
I would be interested in knowing how much money the city has spent in recent years propping up the business community through IPG, and Boundary Road, and the River Road dyke and other such expenditures… contrasted to what is spent on residential infrastructure and services.
We know the tax burden is shifting to the residential home owners away from the business community. We also know the business community bought the current city council.
So ratio wise is the business community getting increased spending on their pet projects with a lowering of their tax rate, while the residential community is being taxed more while getting less?
It seems that way to me. $40 million for Boundary Road seems like an investment for certain business interests… but they get the tax cuts? Does anyone outside the inner business circle know what the real plan is out there, who will develop what and where the revenue will come from to pay for that expenditure?
Wasn’t the number quoted just over 7 dollars per 1,000? Guess our other media outlet doesn’t consider all the other percentages as actual taxes.
If Stolz says so, it must be true.
The people who shouled be making a comment on that are those who pay him the money to sit there and do a wonderful job.
What else is he going to say … “gee, we really did a lousy job this year of handling the money that the taxpayers entrusted us with”?
“2 city workers make sure the manhole covers move then 2 more come down to spray paint the covers”
Too heavy for one person otherwise they would get an MSI.
The spray can is not too heavy for one person, but canot be done by same people who lift the cover since they are not painters. …
Second person not liftiing might be the supervisor, or was he/she sitting in the truck annotating the GIS system? … ;-)
We’re just playing catch up for all those years when we weren’t paying enough to maintain the city, staff, and services. Hang on tight, it’s going to get worse.
And PG is not alone in this regard.
“Wasn’t the number quoted just over 7 dollars per 1,000”
City is 88.13% of total of $9.004/thousand$ (almost $8/thousand)
RDFG = 7.84%
Hospital (I notice they have not changed the name on their data) = 4.03%
Then comes SD57 …. is that decided yet?
Notice in the fine print, this does not include school taxes. In other words that set of figures is unaccurate. Add anoth 25% to the numbers. Thats our city council for ya.
I was pretty excited to see that the light industrial rate went down but then I remembered that our building assessment went up :(
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