Property Manager Asks Council To Not Give Up Seeking Audit On SAMA’s Model
By Robert Thomas
The legal right to appeal decisions is something baked into our psyche. It’s something everyone takes for granted as a recipe that is always there to seek legal recourse.
For one Moose Jaw resident and the group she co-leads, the ingredients for a recipe to stir up and bake your property tax appeal is one where the only cake that comes out is sour and mouldy and geared in favour of the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency (SAMA).
Local property manager/developer Kristy Van Slyck would like to see Council help to change the ingredients and recipe when it comes to appealing SAMA’s property assessments to make them fair and equitable for appellants.
“There is always another step. Of course SAMA doesn’t want to be audited,” Van Slyck told Council.
Kristy Van Slyck addresses Council at their last regular meeting - MJ Independent photo
Van Slyck was requesting Council approach the provincial government to audit SAMA.
The hope was a secondary audit would reveal numerous problems with how SAMA’s most recent reassessment created inequities and lacked fairness.
“You guys as far as to say that you would go to the provincial level if it was denied. As far as I understand nothing else has occurred after SAMA (a secondary audit) denied it,” she said.
Van Slyck said another step could be taken “but of course SAMA doesn’t want to be audited. If they think the secondary audit isn’t the appropriate one there’s some sort of audit that is appropriate.”
Following the denial of the secondary audit by SAMA she said she has sent a letter to the minister in charge of municipal affairs on the issue.
“Six weeks after that, I received a letter back stating that if I wasn’t happy with the system I should use the appeal system or the Ombudsman.”
Council Told About Income Approach
Van Slyck spoke about how the income approach to business property taxation came into being. The income approach makes use of how much income a business can generate from a property to derive a commercial/business property assessment.
Prior to 2009 commercial property assessments were regulated which she saw as causing problems.
“Back when they were trying to implement the income approach they started in 2000…in that report they think they are going to reinvent the wheel,” Van Slyck said.
The 2000 report also stated “it would cost more money to do the income approach system than the one they were already doing,” Van Slyck claimed, adding “It also describes they were having with gaining the government support…it took them 20 years to have it implemented.”
She said implementing the income approach with something SAMA wanted to do in 1992, but it was either delayed or put off for years until it was finally enforced in 2009.
Appeals System Favours SAMA
Van Slyck said property owners receive their property assessments sometime between January and June annually and then have 30 days to appeal the decision.
The appeal requested is a detailed onewhere the property owner must provide specific grounds and details of the reason to appeal as well as proof or evidence why do you appeal was correct.
The problem is SAMA does not have to provide the appealing property owner with any sort of disclosure or reasons why they arrived at the assessed amount until the appeal is submitted.
“It’s pretty hard for the appellant to do that. So they’re asking us to prove an error when we don’t know what they did.”
When an appeal arrives at the Board Of Revision she said that there are restrictions on what the board can do when it comes to relieving an error.
Van Slyck said that SAMA relies upon a single property assessment that does not allow other comparable properties to be used as a basis of an appeal other than ones used in the assessor’s original model.
“But that is confidential information for SAMA (they don’t tell you) so then how do you figure that out?”
Van Slyck said figuring out SAMA’s model can be done, but it would take a property owner “a ridiculous amount of hours” to figure out so the likelihood is the property owner is not going to.
“Then, if you actually do figure out an error and you’re able to prove an error it’s not allowed if that error is also equally distributed across your group,” she said.
“So basically, if you got the wrong and they got the wrong, we all got the wrong and so just leave it.”
She went under state that if a property owner were to appeal to the Saskatchewan Municipal Board that appeal is not a fresh set of eyes, but rather they “can only look at the decision made by the Board of Revision.
“That explains why all of my great evidence I found was ignored (by the Saskatchewan Municipal Board at appeal.”
Van Slyck said the present appeals system does not work so it’s difficult when the government relations tells me to use that system.
She said SAMA moving to a more technologically based system has caused shifts in assessments that for many years prior were static in nature.
“And there never was any issues and things went smoothly. It can be sad for the last 10 to 12 years there a lot more challenges and demands from the municipalities and ratepayers. When did the income approach go? Ten to 12 years ago.”
Van Slyck said it was expensive and time consuming for SAMA to support their commercial property, values system.
In 2001she said SAMA spent $750,000 on lawyers on top of 31,366 man hours in the year of 2021 defending their property assessment values.
“That makes me think that if they spent more time on the model and making sure that the model is correct They wouldn’t have to spend so much time defending it,” she said.
Van Slyck said although she has focussed upon the problems with SAMA’s assessment when it comes to commercial properties, but she has heard. It’s also the same problems when it comes to residential properties.
Van Slyck said the problem was provincewide and that the system should revert to what it was so there wouldn’t be so many problems.
“So I’m here today to ask what are you guys gonna do? How can we move this forward because it’s not working.”
Councillor Jamey Logan asked given the fact that Council had already asked for a secondary audit and it had been denied plus that they were at arms length what was Van Slyck asking for?
Councillor Jamey Logan asked Kristy Van Slyck what she expected the City to do a boat the issue - MJ Independent photo
Ms. Van Slyck responded that in her brief discussions with the Minister’s Office that the Provincial Auditor does conduct audits in this area.
Councillor Logan responded “I believe the last city manager asked for that at the provincial level… but I don’t think it was forgotten. I do believe there was a letter sent on our behalf at the time.”
He asked Van Slyck to hold on for a couple of days to allow further investigation into it, had already been done by the City when it came to the audit issue.
Councillor Logan said once it was determined what has been done already that the City including the city manager sit down with Van Slyck to discuss her concerns.
“…we will do what we can to get this moving,” he said.
Councillor Kim Robinson thanked her for the work stating he firmly believed personally more needed to be done on the issue.
Council voted unanimously to receive and file the report from Van Slyck.