Mayor Says He Does Not Know What City Can Do But Dialogue Is Necessary

By Robert Thomas

Bernie Dombowsky may have come to Council with a “common sense” approach pointing out what he saw as inequities in commercial property taxes caused by the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency’s (SAMA) institution of a 17 category Cap Rate but what can be done about it is unknown. But nevertheless the City is going to give it a try says Mayor Clive Tolley.

In the post Council media scrum the majority of the media questions put to Mayor Tolley and city manager Jim Puffalt dealt with local business property owner Dombowsky’s presentation to Council.

In his presentation Dombowsky spoke about what he saw as inequities in the present commercial property tax system mostly brought on the differential way the Cap Rate was being applied.

“I am not sure what the City can do Robert. I know more dialogue with the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency (SAMA) is necessary and more people like Bernie Dombowsky and the Van Slycks doing their homework and looking at comparable properties and bringing that forward to the City,” Mayor Tolley replied when asked how realistic it was that the City could do anything given provincial legislation and legal precedents set in SAMA’s favour.

Mayor Clive Tolley - MJ Independent file photo

The Mayor said the input could be taken “forward to SAMA. That provides a forum for discussion. We have got some real examples here to make some sense. I applaud those people, they are doing their homework to try to help us address this.”

The City has already started the dialogue with SAMA, he said.

“The City Manager (Jim Puffalt) has been talking to SAMA and forwarded some examples of things we don’t understand and we’ll have a dialogue with them to see if we can’t improve the communication, And move things along to a point where this makes a little bit more sense to the average person,” Mayor Tolley said responding to MJ Independent’s questions.

Asked if the present Cap Rate system is here until the next reassessment in 2025 Mayor Tolley said “I am not certain about that.”

The Mayor did say there were communities with both systems of one Cap Rate and categorized Cap Rates so there may be hope for change.

“I do know Councillor (Dawn) Luhning said some jurisdictions are sticking to using several Cap Rates and others are stuck with one. So we will have to look into that and work with SAMA to see what we can do.”

Asked if he thought the present multiple Cap Rates might serve as a deterrent to businesses setting up in Moose Jaw given Regina is right next door and has one Cap Rate for all commercial properties the Mayor replied all communities were looking to attract new business and retain others.

“I think all municipalities want to be competitive. When we had Garret Maxwell here he said everybody wants to say we are a great city to do business in. We are a great city that keeps our taxes down. We are a wonderful place to come and raise a family to work and live. What separates us from other communities is important to us.”

Despite the limitations from things such as provincial legislation and court precedents the Mayor said the City was still going to give it a good try through dialogue to make change for the better.

“Yeah we are going to do some digging. We are going to see what we can do to try and have a system that makes more sense,” Mayor Toilley said, adding “These examples that were brought forth tonight makes me question how could this occur. So lets have a dialogue, let’s sit down and work at it from an administrative point of view. And let’s see if we can figure this out.”

Asked if the City had looked at having a two year rolling assessment instead of throwing out all of the data every four years as a more fair way to assess properties Mayor Tolley said it was an idea introduced at the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) convention.

“I think you were at SUMA and that was brought forward as an idea. At SUMA that was brought forward as a suggestion to the provincial government that we go to a two year cycle instead of a four year cycle. To make it more recent, more accurate so far there hasn’t been a response to change that. It is something we can look at with the other municipalities.”

The Mayor agreed that “there is always a delay” when it was pointed out that the years 2015 - 2019 were economically better years and by being pre-pandemic commercial properties sold at higher prices. But at the present time many businesses are still struggling to recover from the two COVID - 19 pandemic years of 2020 and 2021.