The Town of Canmore contracts a qualified assessor who assesses properties based on legislation and regulations.
We recently received the 2017 Annual Assessment Notice on our condominium in Canmore. There is now a new direction/requirement from the Government of Alberta to assess titled parking stalls separately from the unit. Instead of receiving one assessment, we received three – one for our unit and one for each of two titled parking stalls.
The assessed value of the unit is unchanged from the 2016 Annual Assessment Notice while each stall was assessed a value of $10,000. We struggle to understand why the assessed value of each stall was not deducted from the assessed value of unit.
Logic would suggest that the value of the titled parking stalls was reflected in the fair market value of the unit in the 2016 assessment and we would have therefore have expected the assessed value in 2017 to have been reduced accordingly.
Splitting the assessments for the titled parking stalls and the unit in this manner has essentially increased the assessed market value of our unit by 4.4 per cent from the prior year. We do not believe this accurately reflects the current market conditions for our property and appears to be a lazy application of new requirements.
In addition, by establishing a separate tax roll number for each stall, the cost to register a complaint related to this treatment has tripled to $150 from $50 since the Complaint Fee Schedule for residential units is $50 per tax roll.
All in all this is a very disappointing outcome. We think the Town of Canmore can do better.
Doug and Cathy Pettapiece,
Canmore
