City blaming province for hefty property tax increase

Calgary City Council will be looking at a motion to create a pilot project that could see bylaw officer hand out speeding tickets in residential areas.

The City of Calgary is hiking property taxes this year and it is blaming the province for contributing to the sharp increase hitting taxpayers in the wallet.

The combined increase is 6.1 percent, thanks in part to the province asking for an additional $70M from the city.

The hike means that homeowners will pay about $170 more for property taxes this year, or about $14 per month.

Non-residential rates are also up about 3.8 percent.

The government is asking for $784M this year, which is about a 9.7 percent increase over 2015.

A number of councillors, as well as Mayor Nenshi, aren’t happy with the province’s increased demand of revenue.

“I’m not very pleased about it. I hope people won’t be too mad at the City, because it is the provincial tax thing. At the end of the day, the province felt the need to increase education expenditure and they’ve got a formula that allows them to increase the taxes the same amount,” Nenshi said on Monday.

While the vote for the tax hike is usually a formality because the city needs to pay taxes to the province regardless, two councillors did vote against it in protest during Monday’s meeting.

Two years ago, the province actually gave back $52M in funding because it didn’t need all the expenditure for education that it asked for in the first place.

After a long deliberation, city council decided to put that money back into the pockets of Calgary taxpayers, offsetting that year’s property tax increase.

In 2015, the city chose to limit the tax increase at 3.5 percent rather than the scheduled 4.7 percent.

Officials said at the time that it was to help out Calgarians who were suffering in the downturn.

The city will begin mailing out tax bills starting May 27th and they are due at the end of June.

For more information on property taxes, click HERE.