There will be no tax increases in the RM of Prince Albert. At their regular meeting on ursday, May 14 the RM council decided to hold the line on taxes while also extending a program to benefit rate payers in light of COVID-19 related financial stress.
“We didn’t do any tax increases, mostly because of the Revenue Sharing increases on behalf of the federal government we were able to hold the line as far as tax increases go,” Reeve Eric Schmalz said.
The increase in revenue sharing was around $90,000 to help the RM hold the line.
“What happens is when they pay early they can get up to a seven percent discount on their property taxes if they pay by July. at is something that we have always o ered to the rate payers. Because of COVID-19 we want to try to help people out, we understand that people are suffering financially and we want to ease the financial burden on individuals in the RM. We are going to extend the full seven percent dis- count to October 31 rather than July,” Schmalz explained.
“It will give people an opportunity to be able to put more money together to pay their taxes and still receive the seven percent discount,” he added.
Schmalz explained that the budget remains status quo and the RM will be able to serve rate payers while still holding the line on taxes.
“We were trying to keep ourselves with some cushion in case there is some unforeseen difficulty with a road getting blown out by a flood, any contingencies basically. We try to leave a cushion within the budget so that we don’t have any overruns during the years and still remain in a good financial position, actually the RM is in an excellent financial position,” Schmalz said.
