Finance and Audit Committee Talk Taxes
Prince George, B.C. – The City of Prince George’s Finance and Audit Committee gathered this afternoon to recommend a tax rate structure for council to consider later this year.
Three options were put forward:
Tax Rate Option # 1: Set the estimated representative home tax increase to 3.21% and obtain the remaining tax revenue required by equally increasing the business, major industrial, light industrial and farm tax rates.
Tax Rate Option #2: Starting from option #1, set major industrial tax rate to $47.00/thousand and obtain the remaining tax revenue by increasing the business, utility, light industrial and farm tax rates.
Tax Rate Option #3: Starting from option #1, set major industrial tax rate to $46.00/thousand and obtain the remaining tax revenue by increasing the business, utility, light industrial and farm tax rates.
In the end, the committee chose to recommend option number 3 (Councillor Albert Koehler left before the vote was taken).
Major points to consider with this option were the major industrial tax rate would decrease by 3.73% and business, utility, light industrial and farm tax rates would increase by 3.19%.
Committee chair Garth Frizzell remarked all three represented “a holding pattern set of options with slight differences.”
“And we didn’t want to make a dramatic upset in the structure of taxation,” he said afterwards.
“So there’s slight variations on how this is being done but essentially what we’re doing is we’re saying we decided as a council months ago what the levy amount was going to be and now we’re just breaking up the amount into different wedges based on the class of property.”
Moving forward, the recommendation will be going to city council for discussion within the next two to three meetings.
The final tax rate must be set by the end of May.
Comments
No surprises here. Some Voodoo mathematics, and a tax increase for citizens and business, while City Council, Administration, and CUPE continue to get increases to wages and benefits.
Either this Council has no clue about how the continual increase in taxes effects people’s ability to pay, or they don’t care.
Council has a bigger responsibility than to maintain the status quo, for city hall at the expense of taxpayers. We need to see some serious reduction in the cost of running the City. Perhaps they should take a page out of Penticton or Quesnels book.
In any event its time for council to wake up and smell the roses. NO MORE tax increases. This should be the last increase for the balance of this Councils term. They should now spend the rest of their time and energy in ensuring that we run a competent, fiscally responsible, City.
Tax Rate Option # 1: Set the estimated representative home tax increase to 3.21% ?
3.21% ??
I wonder how many people got a 3.21% wage increase last year, or are expecting that much in a wage increase this year?
Everyone got a reduction in gasoline price of around 15 to 20% over the past year and it looks like it is not going to go up much very soon.
Say a normal year of $2,000/car, with a dwelling unit likely having two people who drive one car each, that would mean a saving of around $800/year.
If that same two car family had a house with $4,000/year in taxes with a 3.21% increase, that would be an increase of less than $130.
$670 to spare to pay for the more expensive US fruits and vegetables. :-)
I’m at least happy they’re acknowledging property values are also increasing. I’ve never seen the city acknowledge this, and then they would increase the tax rate on top of the increase of values. Always getting hit twice.
Municipalities across Canada need to get their spending under control.
“Set the estimated representative home tax increase to 3.21%…”
The only City Councilor who has steadfastly stuck to his guns is Albert Koehler: Never increase home owner taxes by more than the annual official inflation rate, meaning that the whole huge City apparatus has to LEARN how to live within that very reasonable limit!
time for city to get back to the meat and potatoes of running the city and forget about the steak and lobster for awhile.
will they…
I doubt it….
parties and sports seem to be more imprortant than water and roads.
Yes, they are trying to get some BC Winter Games. I missed the part about how much money that will bring into the City from the Province to build a new curling rink for College Heights.
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