City Says Long Term Practice Separating Tax Policy And The Budget

Although the answer came late we are nevertheless sharing the City’s response to a question we asked tax policy.

Our question dealt with why doesn’t the City post the percentage of actual tax increases instead of a lower amount for residential property owners.

The City responded “the mill rate approved through budget was a 7.60% mill rate increase. Council also has the ability to adjust mill rate factors which are not part of the budget process but considered separately by Council as what we call tax policy. Tax policy allows council to alter the rates of taxation on specific property classes to be able to accomplish goals such as keeping agricultural land taxation as the same level as the RM etc.“

The City responded had been a long term policy to separate tax policy and budget separate.

“The practice of keeping tax policy and budget separate has been a long-standing practice at the city done in part as assessment data needed to complete the analysis for council is never available at budget time and also because tax policy is a separate and distinct policy decision by council separate from budget.”