By Trevor Greenway
The municipality of Alleyn-et-Cawood is trying to change the way Quebec assesses property values after taxpayers saw their home values rise a staggering 370 per cent this spring as part of the province’s triennial assessment role.
According to Alleyn-et-Cawood director-general Isabelle Cardinal, more than 100 lots in the municipality were sold between $40,000 and $50,0000 over the past two years – well above their market value of $12,000 for an acre of land. Because of this, municipal values as a whole went up throughout the entire territory, pushing property values up as high as 370 per cent in some cases – impacting both residents and the municipality significantly.
“This affected our shares for the MRC,” said Cardinal, explaining that Alleyn-et-Cawood’s contribution to MRC Pontiac increased from $113,000 to nearly $300,000 this year.
“They’re using a standardized value to calculate our shares and that’s why we were hit so hard,” she said. “Our MRC Pontiac shares have risen from $113,000 to almost $290,000, an increase close to $177,000 because our municipal value increased from close to $75,000,000 to more than $276,000,000.”
The Ministère des Affaires municipales et de l’Habitation determines its triennial assessments using a median proportion and comparative factor, which is established based on sales on the municipality’s territory during the previous year, compared with the value deposited during the first year of the triennial roll. Because of the large vacant lot sales over the past two years, Alleyn-et-Cawood’s municipal assessment went way up and Cardinal is arguing that it’s not an accurate snapshot of the municipality’s financial situation.
“Myself and a member of the task force went to the preliminary meeting of the mayors at the MRC, and we asked for them to adopt a bylaw for the calculation of the share,” she told the Low Down in early August. “So basically, what we’re asking is for them to use our current municipal evaluation and not the comparative factor.”
The municipality has launched a petition to pressure Quebec to eliminate the comparative factor and build a new model that is more reflective of a municipality’s current financial picture. The petition, which has garnered 441 signatures, can be found on the municipal website at https://www.alleyn-cawood.ca/en.
Cardinal explained that the municipality assured residents that it will adjust the mill rate before next year’s budget to balance out property taxes, however with the big jump in triennial assessments, things like fixed school taxes are what will really hit the wallets of residents.
“We’re trying to convince the Municipal Affairs Minister that a situation like this is untenable for a number of residents,” said Liberal Pontiac MNA André Fortin, continuing, “namely full-time residents who owned small homes for a long period of time, who potentially are already struggling to make ends meet – to pay their municipal taxes, their school taxes and, all of a sudden, they see the value of their house nearly quadruple on the municipal evaluation.”
A mill rate Mill rate is a tax rate – the amount of tax payable per dollar of the assessed value of a property.
Part of the problem, according to Fortin, is that municipal triennial assessments take a sweeping average of home sales to determine the increase, but the method doesn’t take into account whether a certain lot is waterfront, vacant land or farmland.
“So, because they had to go with the average increase in the sales prices, it means that some people whose real home value hasn’t increased that dramatically, will face substantial increases in, for example, their school taxes,” added Fortin.
“There has to be a way to maybe set aside either the evaluation of a sector in the municipality, or there has to be a mechanism by which some home values are excluded from this calculation,” he said.
Fortin said he is working with the ministry on changing the triennial assessment method.