Now is the time to speak up....Property Assessments and Municipal Inspections.

Property Assessments

I'm sure by now almost everybody has received their Property Assessments if your fine with what you received no problem. But if your not, do a little research call some of the local realtor's ask if the values of properties similar to yours have gone up or down. Look around you we have a number of situations in the Crowsnest Pass where people have seen a reduction on their assessed values due to where they live, plus if your living next door to an eye sore that will affect your values. If you feel your  concerns are valid contact the Municipality 562-8833 and ask to speak to the Assessor. (Glen Snelgrove who I have found over the years to be very reasonable to talk to.) I have spoke to so many people over the years that may have had a valid concern but they did not call, remember just because you call does not mean you will be in the appeal process, Mr Snelgrove usually resolves 95% of these issues prior to an appeal.  

Municipal Inspection

The Inspection is still ongoing it's not to late to speak up, if you wish to add your comments or concerns pick up the phone and call Cell: 403-966-7259 or  email @ russ@rfconsulting.ca

Taxes in the Crowsnest Pass

Hearing through the grapevine we are looking at the following:
Three year tax increases of 2.5%, 2.5%, 2.5%
Water + Sewer rate increases of 4.5%
Electric rate increases of 6%

More to follow.

Questions are being asked in the Crowsnest Pass.

Often I have people ask me questions about the political situation in the Crowsnest Pass. So I will take the time to address the most common questions being asked over the last couple of months.

What is your opinion of this new schedule for council meetings?

Since Mayor Decoux and his group of councilors took over there as been 55 meeting of council (Including Council, G+P, Special meeting, Organizational etc up to December 6th 2011)
The average duration of those meeting has been 2 hours and 28 minutes of which 58 minutes on average have been in camera. That means the average resident has had the opportunity to see their council at work making the decisions that impact every one of us for a grand total of six hours a month.
Now I know that most people don't go to council meeting, lets face it the majority of people don't vote.
Why not lessen the number of elections?

But that's not the point, the public must have the opportunity if they so choose to see their council at work, in a community that has a lot of people that work 12 hour shifts and out of town the opportunity must be provided.  
Previous council met every Tuesday (as recommended by the Cuff report) this gave every person four opportunities a month to drop by the municipal office and see their council at work if they wished.

During December, January and now February council has been testing a schedule where they meet on only two days a month one day for just a council meeting. A second day for a G+P meeting in the afternoon and then a council meeting at night. Depending on shift schedules a person may never have the opportunity to attend a meeting.

Is their a lot of debate at the council meeting?

I don't think so, I keep telling people to come to a meeting and check it out for themselves. Some more interesting numbers,  most of us know that you can't make motions In Camera at the average meeting there are 14 motions made, council is only in the public realm for 90 minutes a meeting that means on average a motion is being made every six minutes. Would anybody consider there to be a lot of debate?

Do you feel the strategic plan as been successful?

I respond with what do you think? outside of the Bellevue Library closing, name me one other change. Believe it or not I still get people saying well they consolidated the Blairmore/Coleman shop.

How much are we spending on consultants?

That comes up again and again I am going to request those numbers soon from the municipality, will I be provided them who knows.

Are my taxes going up this year?

My answer is I believe so, but I always caution don't just watch your taxes. Follow franchise fees, user fees, etc. 

Do you think the back tax rate increase had a significant effect on the amount of outstanding back taxes?

Financial statements will be out near the end of April I will compare this years numbers with last.

Just some things to think about and hopefully create some debate

Little confused about property Taxes??

From todays Pass Promoter

"For 2011, a total of $6.841 million is required in taxes. The property tax levy for 2010 was $6.548 million"

Strange taxes did not go up??????

So where does the additional $293,000 come from?

New assessment for those kind of dollars? maybe.

There would have to be new development of $30,000,000 in 2010, or higher assessment based on increased real estate market values.

Cost of taxes and utilities

Interesting numbers!

Combined cost of taxes and utilities for 16 major Canadian Cities.
Next week I will provide the information to see how the Pass compares.

Average property tax and utility charges for single detached house in 2009:

Surrey: $3,183
Winnipeg: $3,440
Victoria: $3,532
St. John's: $3,532
Medicine Hat: $3,553
Halifax: $3,862
Calgary: $4,111
Regina: $4,143
Vancouver: $4,155
Red Deer: $4,166
Montreal: $4,174
Lethbridge: $4,237
Saskatoon: $4,292
Edmonton: $4,455
London: $4,828
Grande Prairie: $5,139


Source: City Of Edmonton

Looking for ideas! Cutting Municipal Costs in the Crowsnest Pass

Anybody following my blog can see that we are having a difficult job keeping taxes under control in the Crowsnest Pass. I would certainly enjoy hearing from my readers any suggestions that would help us out. If you are a little shy and do not wish to post on the blog send your suggestions to deanward4@msn.com.

Thanks Dean

Budget Delibrations Continue In the Crowsnest Pass

Well here we are continuing down the path of trying to get a budget in the Crowsnest Pass. As we go through the old process of drag it out, stall and wait until the last possible moment to come up with the tax rate for the next year.
Monday night we did make a little progress we eliminated one of our cleanups, a request from the Chamber of Commerce for $25,000, a request to spend an extra $27,000 grooming trails, and will bring in $3,000 to remove deep freezes.
That leaves a gap of $156,461 to get down to 5% which is still high when you compare to other municipalities check the list on the left side of this blog. To pay that amount the increase would have to go to 7.5% and zero dollars would be placed into reserves. Some will argue that dollars should not go into reserves during difficult economical times, take a look on the Municipal Web site you will see that we have been depleting reserves for the last six years.
The problem we have, is we has councilors must be prepared to make difficult choices to get down to reasonable tax increase.
Councilors need to do one of several things, come to budget meetings prepared with ideas on how to decrease the budget shortfall, be willing to look at reducing services/programs/expenditures, or be prepared to go with a 7.5% tax Increase.
It gets so tiring listening to "I'm not prepared to look at that", "we can't cut that", well bring your idea's lets debate them, I have no problem going with better ideas than mine.

Or maybe the good taxpayers of the Crowsnest Pass can live with a 7.5% increase this year!

Budget Process in the Crowsnest Pass Continues

Well tomorrow night we are back at it. We will be reviewing Administration, Culture and Recreation departments Tuesday night Dec 9th. Followed up by Public Works Wednesday night Dec 10th.
Right now we are looking at a budget that is presently under funded by close to $1.7 million (that is the amount that taxes would have to increase if we did not cut anything.
Made up of the following:

Tax Shortfall --------------------$1,442,479
2007 Municipal deficit -----------$110,000
2007 Crowsnest Centre deficit ---$94,031
2008 Municipal deficit -----------$???????
2008 Crowsnest Centre deficit--- $???????

Total-----------------------------$1,646,510

Crowsnest Pass, Budget process!

Well Tuesday night (Oct 14th) we were in to the budget process, administration came looking for direction from council. So that all the numbers can be put together and prepared for a mid November presentation to council.
We looked at many different issues that are going to effect what we as the taxpayers will be asked to pay for in the coming year.
Several area's for income generation, ie taxation of secondary homes, and vacant land.
Grants, for weed control, MSI operational funding, Capital projects.
Offsite Levies we have commissioned a study by Stantec to review our off site levies, right now what we charge is probably outdated by ten years.
Develop able lands, council will look at what's available in 2009.
We discussed reviewing the future needs of our electrical system and preparing our reserves to accommodate those requirements.
Water, sewer, garbage and recycling, are these being fully supported by utility bills or are they being paid for out of general revenue? we will be provided with that information.
Franchise and user fees we will be reviewing, should the user be paying more of the cost of a service or should that burden fall on all taxpayers?
Reserves, should we being looking at building reserves? our reserves have dropped to very minimal levels, due to cancelling the Public Works shop we may have a total of $6-700,000 in reserves by year end.
Professional services, should we be tendering them out at set time frames?
Insurance Premiums, should we be insuring everything at replacement value? big cost for the municipality this year around $260,000.
Not for profit funding, every year we have many worthy groups that we give funding to, should we be reevaluating that process?
Economic Development what role should the municipality play? presently we give $20,000 a year to the Economic Development Board plus $15,000 to the marketing Consortium should that continue? should those funds be used differently?
Some other issues we have to look at regarding determining where we are at as a municipality and where we are going, Corporate review, Municipal Development Plan, Municipal Census, Community Enhancement Fund, etc, etc.

Second issue on the agenda was the Crowsnest Centre, at our previous council meeting we had requested information from both our administration and the Crowsnest Centre board so we could start moving forward on this issue, administration presented the information they had available. One councilor indicated that he will be making motions at the Oct 21st council meeting regarding the centre.

Municipal Finances in the Crowsnest Pass and Fiscal Responsibilty

We have a problem the state of our finances, some people think I speak too much about the Crowsnest Centre but to me the Crowsnest Centre is just a small reflection of the much larger problem we have in the Crowsnest Pass. That is understanding that government cannot do everything for everybody (whether that is individuals or groups) without there being a cost. Yes, crazy concept here we are talking about fiscal responsibility and making tough choices.

I will talk about where we came from and where we were at the end of 2007 and where we are going.

As recent as 2001 we has a Municipality had zero long-term debt at the end of 2007 we had $2,167,472 in debt and by the time we pay, it off with interest the real cost will be $2,739,249.

At the end of 2001, we had $2,963,317 in reserves broken down into the following categories:
......................................2001........................ 2007...
Administration .................$336,706................ $25,985
Emergency Services ............$200,079............... $31,376
Road ..............................$183,073................ $512,620
Sanitary ..........................$280,000 ...............$ 531
FCSS ..............................$4,911.....................$ 5,640
Land/Housing ...................$958,071 ................$493,165
Recreational Facilities ..........$310,519................ $142,582
Electrical Distribution ...........$172,000................ $2,210
Millrate Stabilization ............$517,958................ $327,392

Total...................................$2,963,317..............$1,541,501

At the end of 2007, we had reserves of $1,541,501 a drop of $1,421,816, that is significant but
it gets worse our 2008 budget allowed for expenditures of roughly $1.2 million that were funded from reserves, which is going to leave us in a position of having less than $400,000 in reserves. Believe it or not it could get even worse we agreed to purchase a new rescue truck for the sum of $213,000 to be paid for with the monies received from a GST refund, the Federal Government appealed that refund if we lose that appeal the rescue truck will be paid for out of reserves now will be down to less than $200,000.

Now comes the really tough part besides the fact that we will have nothing left in our reserves, to maintain the same level of expenditures in 2009 where do we get the $1.2 million from. Taxes this year increased on average 12% are our taxpayers willing to do that again? Alternatively, are they going to demand that we become fiscally responsible and make tough decisions? We did not get to where we are today by accident!

Very good editorial from this week's local paper

Check the following out, its does not take a political position either way on the issue, just fair and reasonable comment.

http://www.crowsnestpasspromoter.com/Editorial/index.html

Reinforces once again that it is not unreasonable to provide the public with all the information before they vote.

Property Taxes in the Crowsnest Pass

There as been much said in the last few days about the large property tax increase in Calgary, an increase that works out on average to $106 per home. They should consider themselves lucky.
The "Average" increase per home in the Crowsnest Pass works out to $174.40, that's a whopping 11.2%.
The property tax for a average home with a value of $220,000 will be $1729.72
Keep in mind that is an average thanks to the wild swings in property values some people are going to see increases of 20-30%.
Don't be shy let the politicians know your feelings, excuses will be tossed around.
There is an attitude amongst politicians all over that the public will keep accepting these types of increases.
Is that true?