(File Photo/northeastNOW Staff)

By Mat Barrett

Tax Collection in Melfort

Gas tax helping City of Melfort with tax collection much lower than normal

Jun 16, 2020 | 9:28 AM

The City of Melfort held their regular council meeting on Monday, June 15, and such as a lot of things in 2020, a major topic had to do – somewhat – with the COVID-19 pandemic.

At every meeting, the Tax Collection Comparative statement is circulated, and Monday’s meeting saw that same thing. However, what jumped off the page was the City of Melfort was about $668,000 behind in property tax collection for the month of May compared to the same month in 2019. The drop in tax collection wasn’t unexpected as the city put in some measures to help soften the financial blow of the pandemic for residents. It allowed residents to essentially defer their property tax payments to later in the year.

Mayor Rick Lang said while the numbers may be low right now, they’ll eventually balance themselves out.

“There’s going to come a point in time where those are due,” he said. “And then all of a sudden we’ll get all kinds of tax dollars coming in the door, but the catch is to just make things work until then.”

Lang said the City of Melfort is in good financial shape as it stands right now as they were heading into the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s also been some help at other stages of government to keep some sort of cash flow for the city. The Government of Saskatchewan usually pays out their gas tax to municipalities in two payments. However, the City of Melfort was able to get theirs all at once.

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“That’s really helped with the cash flow issues that we had identified as possible issues,” Lang told northeastNOW. “And they haven’t come to fruition, fortunately, because of that. So that’s really helped us out substantially.”

He added the flexibility of the gas tax was a plus.

“That money is something that we put into our operational budget, and we just use it as we see fit,” Lang said.

While the financial blow hasn’t been felt a great deal yet for the city, it was mentioned at the meeting on Monday it could be seen a bit more in the capital budget later in the year. Lang said they don’t plan to borrow any funds at this point and will adjust accordingly based on what needs to be done in the city at that point.

“The only way we’d be looking at external borrowing at this stage in the game is if we’re approved for certain capital projects that we’ve put applications in for and we rationalize the completion of those particular projects with external borrowing,” he said.

As for residents and their property taxes, assessment notices were sent out in the middle of May. They have until July 13 to appeal their assessment.

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mat.barrett@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @matbarrett6