Both Cal Huntley and George Fontaine raised some good points during a cordial mayoral candidates’ forum heard on 102.9 CFAR last week.
Huntley’s zenith may have come when he pointed out that an increase in your property assessment need not mean an automatic hike to your tax bill.
“When you have a significant increase in assessed housing value, [the city has] the ability to adjust the mill rate to mitigate what might be an unreasonable increase,” Huntley said.
For years, some municipal politicians in Flin Flon (and elsewhere) have seemingly washed their hands of soaring tax bills by blaming rising
assessments.
Kudos to Huntley for stressing that, yes, although assessments rise, municipalities still control the actual tax rate.
In fairness, the matter is a bit more complicated than that.
As Fontaine said, sometimes the mill rate must be set before the assessments are known – and “that’s where the hard part is.”
A highlight for Fontaine came when he revealed the city has told the provincial government it cannot afford to comply with certain orders around the Flin Flon landfill. The city has stood up and
said no.
That’s good to know considering how costly provincial mandates have proven for Flin Flon taxpayers in recent years.
While Flin Flon should observe all reasonable and urgent regulations, the reality is that some things that seem important to bureaucrats in Winnipeg are impractically costly for our community.
