An Update on the 2018 Tax Rates
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Today’s news relates to the 2018 tax rates in By-Law 40/2018 that was passed by Council on May 15th. An earlier draft of the by-law was reviewed by the Committee of the Whole on May 1, 2018; some revisions were made at that time.
The total municipal tax levy for 2018 is $19,043,722 and it is partly offset by some of the interest that was earned in 2017 on the two $10-million LLRW funds. For comparison, the municipal levy for 2017, also before the use of any LLRW interest, was $18,324,710. From 2017 to 2018, the levy increase is 3.92%.
Note that your property-tax bill contains three parts: municipal, county, and province (for education purposes). You will have received an interim tax bill earlier in 2018, based on the current assessed value of your property for 2018 and using 50% of the approved tax rates from last year, 2017. In the next step, probably by the end of May, the final 2018 tax bills will be issued.
2018 Municipal Property Tax Rates by Ward:
For ratepayers in Ward 1 (Urban), tax rates are going down slightly for the municipal portion of your property-tax bill.
For Ward 1 (Urban) the 2018 levy against tax bills is $15,288,190 (up 2.57% from $14,905,259 last year). Although the levy is up from 2017 to 2018, the total property assessment for Ward 1 increased by a larger percentage and the Ward 1 residential tax rate has decreased by 1.5%, going down from 0.00964831 for 2017 to 0.00950367 for 2018. LLRW interest is noted below.
For ratepayers in Ward 2 (Rural), tax rates are going up significantly for the municipal portion of your property-tax bill.
For Ward 2 (Rural) the 2018 levy against tax bills is $3,558,750 (up 19.83% from $2,969,730). Although the total property assessment for Ward 2 has increased from 2017 to 2018, the levy has gone up by a much larger percentage and as a result the Ward 2 residential tax rate has increased by 12.65%, going up from 0.00512679 for 2017 to 0.00577543 for 2018. Again, LLRW interest is noted below.
Municipal tax rates for most of the other property classes (commercial, pipeline, managed forest, farmland) have changed by similar percentages. The multi-residential property class is an exception and gets a break, due to certain new restrictions that have been imposed by the Province for that class for 2018.
Also noteworthy for 2018, Northumberland County has made adjustments to reduce the property-class ratio of the industrial property classes. When the ratio of one class goes down, each of the other property classes has to pick up some of the load (with an increased tax rate) to meet the municipality’s total levy requirements.
Although the agriculture community approached the County a year ago, with a request for some tax relief from the dramatic increase in MPAC’s valuation of farmland, the County’s recent review of property-class tax ratios did not result in any change to the ratio for the farmland property class.
Tax-Rating By-Law 40/2018, from the Council agenda for May 15th, is downloadable in PDF format from the following link:
https://porthope.civicweb.net/FileStorage/1ABF6545846741F4BD81E4B4636AD936-By-law%2040-2018%202018%20Tax%20Levy%20By-law.pdf
The by-law contains all of the 2018 tax rates for each ward, by property class, including the municipal rates, the county rates, and the (provincial) education rates.
Use of Interest Earned on the Two $10-million LLRW Funds:
Note that the 2018 application of 2017 interest earned on the LLRW funds, as presented in the by-law, is different compared to prior years. From the Ward 2 (Rural) Fund, $196,782 of 2017 interest is being used to reduce 2018 municipal taxes for Ward 2 (Rural); this is consistent with the last few years. However, new for 2018, the interest from the Ward 1 (Urban) fund is being directed to other purposes within that ward and is not being used to reduce 2018 municipal taxes. (Ward 2 interest is noted in the by-law.)
2018 County and Education Property Tax Rates:
The residential tax rate for Northumberland County has moved down by 0.79%, from 0.00481138 for 2017 to 0.00477339 for 2018.
The residential tax rate for the Province (education) has gone down by 5.03%, from 0.00179000 for 2017 to 0.00170000 for 2018.
Questions or Concerns?
If you have questions or concerns about the 2018 municipal budget and/or tax rates, contact your councillors, or the mayor, or the deputy mayor. Water and waste-water charges are billed on a user-pay basis; they do not affect your property-tax bills in either ward.
For the assessed value of your property, if you have questions or concerns you should review your assessment notice and contact MPAC (the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, an agency of the Province of Ontario).
If you have any other questions or comments, please send email to us at porthopersforfairtaxes@gmail.com
Port Hopers for Fair Taxes
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