By Sheldon Spackman

Relief

Taxes going down in Penhold

May 14, 2020 | 1:47 PM

Taxes will be going down for the average property owner in Penhold this year.

Following Monday’s council meeting, Town officials announced the average residence will see a decrease of 2.5 per cent in their property tax rates for 2020. A new rate which officials say reflects the lowest tax rate for some homes, dating back to 2013.

Mayor Mike Yargeau says council and staff have worked hard at finding creative cost saving options.

“This is something we’ve been working at as an organization for a number of years now, just making sure we’re more efficient spending tax dollars better than we have,” he explains. “It’s convenient for us, now that we’re able to do it at a time when residents need all the relief they can get. We’re excited that we’re finally getting to the point where we can start to take action on some of the things we’ve been working on the last number of years.”

Yargeau notes that budgets have been reworked to reflect changes caused by COVID-19 and the closure of the Regional Multiplex.

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“We lost revenue, we’re one of the few communities in central Alberta that has summer ice, so our facility is always very busy over the summer,” he points out. “So we’ve lost revenue there, but at the same time, we’ve had to deal with some temporary layoffs and obviously not having ice in, saves money at the same time. So that part has sort of balanced out and we just made the other figures work as best we could and here we are.”

Elsewhere, RCMP policing is now an additional cost placed on the Town of Penhold by the provincial government, one that is expected to escalate over the next three years.

“We had been prepared for that actually for a few years now,” says Yargeau. “We’ve been sort of setting aside money each year, knowing that we were going to have to be doing this eventually. The policing, it’s a new cost for us this year, it’s approximately $60,000, but we were prepared for it.”

Assessment and tax notices will be mailed out to Penhold residents May 15.