The University of Saskatchewan’s Centre for Hydrology is asking Canmore council to provide tax relief for a new property it has acquired in the community for its programming.
Professor John Pomeroy, who runs the U of S Coldwater Laboratory program in Kananaskis Country, was in front of council at its first meeting in December to ask for municipal property taxes on a property recently purchased in Canmore on Sidney Street to be waived.
Pomeroy is the Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change and has been working in the Rocky Mountains studying these processes for several years.
“A large element of this program will occur in the mountains,” said Pomeroy, “looking at melting glaciers and changing snowpacks, changing streamflows, floods, droughts, changing groundwater and that is part of the impetus to rent office space in Canmore, to have a mountain presence for the facility.”
Pomeroy directs 12 scientists and students out of the Coldwater Laboratory in K-Country and has recently received seven years of funding from the university’s Global Water Futures program and the federal Canada First Research Excellence Fund.
As a result of that funding, Pomeroy said the program would like to relocate its Coldwater Laboratory to Canmore and has successfully leased space at 1151 Sydney Street for a reduced rent, he added.
Pomeroy said if council votes to provide municipal property tax relief for the property while they lease it, they would be able to further reduce costs and direct the funding they received towards research.
While the space is being referred to as a laboratory, Pomeroy said no experiments are conducted or chemicals used, it is a university research facility and scientists use it to study hydrology in the mountains.
He said the research being conducted has a very real world application for Canmore in that one of the goals of the work is to develop a disaster warning system for steep creeks in mountains terrain. Pomeroy told council being able to predict and forecast hydrology in this region is an important part of the work and could give the community and municipality far more time to react to a situation like the one that occurred in June 2013.
Councillor Sean Krausert pointed out that if Pomeroy was working for a university or post-secondary institute in Alberta, the facility would automatically receive property tax relief. Universities are exempt from property tax in their home province, Krausert pointed out.
“My understanding is that if you were from the University of Calgary you wouldn’t have to make an application to us,” he said.
Krausert said he was willing to support the request if it was needed to secure the lease of the space. Pomeroy indicated the lease had been signed, and council will consider the request at its next business meeting.
