MELFORT — Melfort council has passed their new municipal mill rate for property taxes, raising from 10.30 to 10.69 mills.
After the annual budget is approved by the city each year, a mill rate is calculated and applied to all properties. The mill rate factor is a tax policy tool used to redistribute the amount of total taxes paid by each property class.
The base tax is to be levied on improved residential, industrial and agriculture for $740, $498 for improved vertical condominiums, and $600 for unimproved residential, commercial, industrial or agriculture.
Coun. Tim Hoenmans attributed inflation as one of the largest factors leading to the decision.
“Inflation has been running rampant and the fact that we were doing our best just to keep up,” Hoenmans said.
“It’s difficult on everybody when inflation runs as high as it does but if they were calculating inflation the same way today that they were doing back in the 80s, I would suspect we would be closer to the neighbourhood of 15 or 16 per cent inflation.”
Another factor Hoenmans attributed to the increase was difficulty obtaining and pricing materials to carry out projects.
“We didn’t want to have big increases but we also know that we have a very large infrastructure deficit looming over this community and if we don’t start to address it, it’s just going to get worse and worse and the cost of replacing those aging, failing assets is just going to get out of hand to the point we’re not going to be able to do it.”
