CANMORE – The Town of Canmore is reopening its 2020 operating budget to find cost savings and lower property taxes to 2019 levels in an effort to support the community's struggling businesses and residents during the COVID-19 public health crisis.
“We got to get started on this,” said Canmore Mayor John Borrowman prior to council’s unanimous support on April 21 to update this year’s budget.
Council directed administration to amend its 2020 operating budget to address a “medium impact pandemic scenario,” which includes providing increased social and economic development supports for those individuals and businesses most affected by the pandemic.
“That is what council should be focusing on," Borrowman said. "How can we actually use our resources to help people in our community that are really needing help?
“And I don’t mean to exclude people who are hurting just a little bit, because most of us are hurting in one way or another. So we have to show that it’s important that the residents and business owners know that council cares about the situation, and we’ll be doing everything within our actual capacity to address the very real needs for a number of people in our community.”
Borrowman noted the downside is the municipal process can be slow, especially during a crisis.
During the April 21 finance meeting, council's direction for amendments to the operating budget included to maintain essential services and business continuity; provide department expenditure reductions to help mitigate losses in revenue; allow for scalability of operations post pandemic; and provide options to reduce the municipal 2020 tax requirement to the same level as 2019.
The Town’s finance department expects to be back before council in May or June with a better understanding of the evolving situation.
Working within the medium-impact pandemic scenario, Canmore’s planned budget adjustments will go to the end of July. The calculated low-impact scenario would have gone until the end of May and a high impact scenario to the end of December.
Therese Rogers, general manager of corporate services, said the Town of Canmore does not have any legal standing that would require property owners to pass property tax relief onto tenants.
“Whether that be residential or non-residential and so we really need to think about other options for those businesses and residents that have been significantly impacted by COVID-19, whether it’s job loss, business closure or other factors,” said Rogers.
“So our next steps are to take the time that we need to continue to work and understand this ever-changing environment and to really work through our options that we are going to bring to council and understand the impact of those.”
Before his support, Councillor Jeff Hilstad acknowledged the areas beneficial to those in need.
“With the whole tax reduction, it’s not going to be equal to everyone because some people are still able to pay their taxes no problem and some others are not," Hilstad said.
"I’m happy to see increased social and economic development supports for those individual and businesses most impacted by the pandemic because not everyone is impacted the same and that’s just something everyone needs to be cognizant about.”
Coun. Joanna McCallum added the increased social and economic development supports for those individuals and businesses most impacted by the pandemic was important to her, and noted it is in response to the “inelegance of the property tax system.”
“It’s a very imperfect tool that we’re using and that we’re forced to use by the provincial government to get revenue to provide services for citizens and residents," McCallum said.
"By using that tool to provide relief we’re not actually going to get relief to the people who really need it. In a residential scenario, when a third of your population isn’t permanent, that doesn’t seem to matchup with what our goals are, so I do appreciate administration for putting that in.”
