There is no property tax rate hike planned for 2017, according to the almost $150 million General Operating Budget presented at Council last night.
However, Chief Financial Officer John Martin said property tax assessments are going up 3.3% according to the province because of a new method of assessment.
He estimates this will bring in an additional $4.2 million next year.
“It’s great news for the City, it’s an initiative from the provincial government, they realized that we were probably missing out on opportunities, I mean they looked at things like markets and neighbourhoods, doing the flyovers, doing a lot of statistical analysis,” says Martin. “I have a sense that this is almost like a catch up year, so I don’t think that they’ll be promising continued growth, I know they’re hoping to keep it growing, but because it was low for a year or so I think this was an opportunity to do a catch up.”
Martin adds this is especially good news because provincial payments have dropped $10 million over the last five or six years.
“What they’ve done is they’ve linked up the assessment and unconditional grant, and equalization grant, so when one goes up, the other goes down a bit,” says Martin. “We’re still wrestling with that, but overall revenue is still increasing which is what we really need for the City to grow and develop.”
Martin says property taxes account for 88.5% of revenue for the City of Moncton up almost 10% since 2008.
For the average Moncton home priced at $162,500, next year’s property taxes will increase by $91, to $2,681.
2017 Operating Budget City of Moncton
