Garth Glover, Manger of Treasury, Planning, & Analysis presents tax supported budget at council

By Hayley Ferguson

City Council

Council approves property taxes to go up by 3.5%

Dec 17, 2019 | 2:33 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – The City of Medicine Hat will be raising property taxes, but not as much as originally expected.

The city’s four-year budget, which focuses on depending less on their reserves and utility revenues, had planned on raising taxes by four per cent every year.

In the final council meeting of 2019, councilors voted 6-2 for that increase to be just 3.5 per cent.

The decision was made after the city saw higher electricity profits than expected and provincial changes, which allows the city to fully tax Aurora Cannabis.

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“The councilors, they’re really trying to do the right thing,” said Mayor Ted Clugston. “Ray Bernard, former CAO, use to say don’t take a dime from the taxpayer before you absolutely have to. And in this case, I thought we didn’t have to take the full four.”

Clugston added that the electricity is mostly coming from outside of Medicine Hat.

“The citizens are going to say ‘oh you’re just making that extra money on our back.’ No. I know the rate cap has come off but the majority of the profits that the city is making in electrical generation are not on the backs of the citizens of Medicine Hat,” Clugston continued. “I’m going to say this a million times, they are on the backs of frankly our fellow Albertans.”

The .5 per cent means a saving of $11 for the average home in Medicine Hat from what it could have been with a rise of four per cent.

Even with the raise, Clugston says that the Medicine Hat advantage is still strong, citing lower combined average property tax and utilities than other cities in Alberta.

“When you combine both utilities and taxes, just if we moved to Lethbridge rates, there’s $15 million more. That solves all of our problems if we just charged what Lethbridge does,” Clugston said.

Councilor Robert Dumanowski agreed with the 3.5 per cent.

“I fully believe it’s appropriate. It’s a measured way to say you know what, we have a need to take from you as a taxpayer, but we’re going to do it carefully and prudently” he said.

Councilors Darren Hirsch and Kris Samraj were the only two to vote against the drop-in rate.

Citing that these prices and experiences could just be windfall and need to focus on the long term.