A provincial taxation reassessment on Greater Sudbury properties last year has forced Greater Sudbury to increase the 2010
tax burden on city residents, though not all residents and businesses will see increased taxes.
City taxes will increase 0.2 per cent over and above the 3.1 percent increase city council voted on during the 2010 city budget deliberations, Ed Stankiewicz, Greater Sudbury manager of financial planning and policy, said. The increase can amount to anywhere from $74 to $85 for residential taxpayers depending on what area of the city they live if they had an average increase of 12.1 per cent in assessed value from 2009 to 2010.
A province wide reassessment raised the assessed value of properties in Greater Sudbury, which is the cause for the tax raise. But Stankiewicz said there could be a break for homeowners.
If a house was above the average municipal assessment increase, then property taxes will rise. However, if they are below the average increase, in the seven to eight per cent increase range, property taxes could decline, according to Stankiewicz.
On the other hand, assessments for businesses have declined because of provincial policy to reduce their education taxes, he noted.
“There are 2,194 of 2,618 commercial properties that will experience a tax reduction in 2010," he said. "The decreases in the Commercial and Industrial classes are a result of the graduated reduction measure in the Business Education Tax (BET) introduced in the 2007 Ontario budget that is now at the target rate in 2010.”
Stankiewicz said there are 13 large industrial properties in the city with over 125,000 square feet in area.
“None of them are seeing increases in taxation. They all will see decreases in taxation because of the education tax reduction.” That does not affect the city coffers as the monies are passed onto the various school boards, he noted.
Rodriguez was asked by reporters if he thought industrial classes of taxpayers were paying their fair share of taxes.
“All properties, residential, commercial and industrial were reassessed by us on the basis of market value and directions we received from the province with respect to how high we can assess them. We obey all of those. I am satisfied they are paying their fair share.”
Rodriguez said the percentage of taxes paid by residential and agricultural was to be 63.1 per cent of the total taxes collected.
“That indicates to me we don't have a large industrial and commercial sector," Rodriguez said. "That is one of the drawbacks. In a lot of other communities there is a lot of industry and a lot of commercial (establishments). It is about 50/50 there. But here we have this anomaly. We know what we have to do. We have to expand the industrial and commercial tax base so that we can bring those percentages more in balance.”
Rodriguez did say that the mining supply and service sector is adding more taxes to city coffers.
“They are still small and medium sized but they are growing. There about 400 of them now providing goods and services. They have above ground buildings. Any buildings they put up we can assess for taxes.”
“We have been effective in attracting larger business. Commercially look at the new box stores in the east end and the south end, the building of hotels. One new one is going up on the Kingsway. More and more, we are trying to expand that base.”
