At its December Council meeting held via Zoom due to inclement weather, the Town of Huntsville joined other municipalities, including the Township of Lake of Bays and the District of Muskoka, in calling on the province to resume property assessments.
The resolution passed by council noted that the assessment cycle is essential for maintaining fairness and predictability of property taxes. It noted that the pause in the reassessment cycle has created uncertainty and instability, impacting both residential and commercial property owners.
Municipalities are using 2016 property values to calculate property taxes, and the outdated assessments are inaccurate, increase volatility, and are not transparent, noted the resolution.
The resolution also called on further skills enhancement and training in assessments for staff at the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, “recognizing the importance of ensuring accurate evaluations for 100% of our municipality…”
The provincial government announced that it would be reviewing the property taxation system to ensure fairness, equity and economic competitiveness, but the resolution passed by the Town of Huntsville and other municipalities is calling on the Premier to “promptly resume the assessment cycle to ensure the stability and predictability of property taxes while the Government conducts its review of the property assessment and taxation system, or respond with an alternative method for every municipality in Ontario to achieve fair taxation…”
The resolution also encourages all municipalities in Ontario and constituents “to apply pressure to the Premier, daily, weekly, and monthly, to resolve the situation before it causes undo stress to everyone…”
When asked by councillors why the province is taking so long, Huntsville Director of Finances and Treasurer Julia McKenzie said the issue keeps coming up. “I think one thing that we have to appreciate is that fact that the last cycle that they had was during the pandemic, which is why that one was delayed and then this cycle has been extremely volatile in prices, so I can kind of understand them waiting for things to settle down… but I don’t know if that’s the motivation… prices have been so up and down that it would be hard to find one base rate where in the past we had a lot more stability. “
In the end, council passed the resolution unanimously.
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Transparency and MPAC are more or less mutually opposite things.
100% accuracy is a dream of misguided municipal staff.
This system needs to be fixed to make it work better for sure but I seriously doubt what is going to happen will make anything better for the citizens of Ontario.
The proposed review may make some politicians and bureaucrats feel better but that is irrelevant to the issue here as I don’t see it having much impact on the citizens actually affected and paying the bill.
We need to take a long and very hard look at government expenditures and find ways to reduce them. In some cases reduced services will be needed but, remember, we are already seeing reduced services in our day to day life when dealing with government. The constant barrage of new rules from government, as an example in Lake of Bays, the road allowance access by law, seem more aimed at reducing any possible government responsibility to make the bureaucratic and political life more “safe”. It does not appear to me that the goal of many rules is to somehow better the life of our residents.
User fees are a form of reduced services too and in all cases transparency is not a prime consideration. The sheer amount of verbiage, legal terminology and a planning act so tortuous that only full time specialists can attempt to understand all the ramifications of it do not make for “transparency” in any way.
Duplication and wildly varying fees at different government levels is a big problem and consumes a lot of money. MPAC is just one item on the list.