New Brunswick property tax bills are out. Homeowners are hit the hardest — again
Large government properties benefitting from discounts aimed at houses
And even after assessment, tax rate and municipality changes in 2022, the results for homeowners are pretty much the same as last year — the amount they are being charged is up.
"People aren't happy with it," Jim Bedford told CBC Information Morning in Saint John last week as the bills began arriving in his community.
Bedford is mayor of the new municipality of Fundy-St. Martins, where both assessment and tax-rate increases in the rural community established by the province have each raised what residents are being billed.
"We get nothing in return," said Bedford. "It's pay it and have a good day."
Saint
John Mayor Donna Reardon said the city would like a better balance in
city property taxes but is limited in what it can do by provincial
rules. (Hadeel Ibrahim/CBC)
For the last two years, large increases in assessments, primarily on houses and apartment buildings, has been driving up tax bills on those properties all over New Brunswick.
Even in municipalities where local councils have been cutting property tax rates to offset the rise in assessments, bills to homeowners have still been climbing rapidly.
In part, that's because homeowners have to pay for discounts their local governments have to provide to many large properties in their communities that are provincially owned or funded.
In Moncton this week, property tax bills sent to the Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre, the Université de Moncton and the Moncton Campus of the New Brunswick Community College are down a combined $488,700 from what the three paid the city two years ago.
The discounts are the result of classifications in New Brunswick legislation that define certain large health and education related properties as "residential."
That entitles them to the same tax treatment as a house.
Over the last two years, Moncton has cut its residential tax rate 12.5 per cent to offset assessment increases residents have experienced on homes. But those assessments have risen as much as 50 per cent in some neighbourhoods and the result is tax bills on houses are rising anyway.
All
52 houses on Creighton Avenue in Saint John this year got an assessment
increase of 29 per cent or above on top of increases last year. It
equates to a $600 increase in property tax per house. Some will see that
immediately and some will have it phased in over three years. (Roger Cosman/CBC)
By contrast, many provincial government buildings, which have had only minor assessment increases over the last two years, are getting significant reductions in their bills by piggybacking on the residential tax cuts.
It's one of the reasons cities are asking the province to divide up tax categories into more precise groupings.
"We need increased tax classes," said Saint John Mayor Donna Reardon.
"We need to have that flexibility. If we need to tweak the tax rates then we can do that."
Like in Moncton, tax revenues to Saint John this year from properties like the Saint John Regional Hospital and the adjacent campus of the University of New Brunswick are down $236,885 from two years ago.
Université
de Moncton carries one of the largest assessments in New Brunswick but
is classified as a residential property, like a house, under provincial
rules. (CBC)
It's a consequence of a 9.2 per cent cut in the city's residential tax rate over the last two years. But while the cuts have driven down what the province has to pay the city on properties it owns or funds, it has only slowed tax increases flowing to homeowners.
On Creighton Avenue in east Saint John, the 52 houses on the street have received average assessment increases of 40 per cent over the last two years. That equates to an average tax increase of more than $600 per house, even with the city's tax-rate reduction.
Some of the houses have gotten those increases already and some with longer-term owners are having them phased in over the next three years, but every property on the street is getting a higher bill of some kind this year.
Overall in the city, residential properties are being billed $9 million more this year than two years ago.
Part of that is from new construction but most is from higher charges on existing properties. Reardon said it is important for cities to be able to better target where their tax cuts go.
In an email, spokesperson Vicky Lutes of New Brunswick's Department of Local Government said comprehensive reform of local government taxation is not planned until 2024, with implementation planned for 2025, although short-term measures have not been ruled out.
In 2022, the province created a new tax class for industrial properties. It partially ended a requirement that municipalities include commercial and industrial properties in any tax cuts granted to residential properties.
According to Lutes, more short-term reforms like that are under discussion with the province's municipal associations.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mayor of Fundy-St. Martins rankled by large tax increases
Some parts of the new village are getting a 20-cent hike in their property tax rate
Jennifer Sweet · CBC News · Posted: Mar 03, 2023 4:33 PM AST
Jim Bedford, mayor of Fundy-St. Martins, is disappointed in the budget imposed on his newly expanded village by the provincial government. (Facebook/Jim Bedford)
AND
What's in a name? Some Acadians have long struggled with Université de Moncton
Root of the issues goes back to the 1755 Acadian explusion and the role of Col. Robert Monckton
Vanessa Moreau · CBC News · Posted: Mar 04, 2023 8:00 AM AST
"According to Arseneau, who represents the riding of Kent North, changing the name has been a discussion that seems to come up every few years for as long as he can remember, but no action has ever been taken.
He said he was "very pleased" by the response from Prud'homme, saying it was more openness to the idea than he or the institution had shown in the past.
"Lately, there's this movement of a lot of community members from the Acadian community," said Arseneau. "To have a name that better reflects the importance and the place that the University of Moncton takes for Acadians and for francophones in New Brunswick."
It's also typical of the writer for making no reference at all to the ongoing ugly inflation that we're all facing (government and municipalities included) on a daily basis; inflation that has been further fueled by the wasteful spending of the Trudeau government, and of course the useless carbon tax.
People in Moncton can complain about the reduction in tax revenues from their two large hospitals and university, but they sure are happy to have all the employment these places provide. The same goes for all other provincial locations fortunate enough to have government buildings and the well paid jobs that accompany them.
But yeah.....somehow it's just gotta be because of Higgs!
So you say oh ye without the sand to use his real name
"The New Brunswick government is calling on municipalities to consider cutting their tax rates for 2023 in the face of large assessment increase notices being mailed out to provincial property owners this week.
"Local governments will need to take these assessment increases into consideration when setting their property tax rates for next year," said Service New Brunswick Minister Mary Wilson in a statement alerting property owners that assessment increases are in the mail."
Guess that didn't happen. Funny how that is. Mine went from 10.18 per K to 10.59 per K.
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