As some municipalities take the drastic step of withholding Municipal Property Assessment Corporation fee payments out of protest, this city’s mayor is taking a “wait-and-see” approach.
The Dryden Observer is reporting that Dryden city council passed a resolution to withhold $79,000 in outstanding fees owed to MPAC. City officials said they felt the corporation had not adequately represented that city’s needs.
The conflict’s genesis was the reassessment of the Domtar mill, which saw its property value dropped by about 72 per cent.
Other municipalities, including Elk Lake and Espanola, also plan to withhold paying fees to MPAC.
Thunder Bay now faces a similar scenario to those other regional municipalities. Resolute Forest Products wants a 60 per cent reduction in its assessment, which would bring the current tax assessment value of Resolute of $72 million to about $29 million.
If Resolute gets what it wants, the city could owe the company as much as $7.5 million in retroactive tax payments from 2009 to 2012.
Mayor Keith Hobbs spoke with Dryden mayor Craig Nuttall and said that Dryden appeared to be a city in a dire situation. He wasn’t sure how the city was going to be able to continue to do business as the residential tax base is already high.
Unlike Dryden, the reassessment of Resolute is still underway and requires approval from MPAC.
Hobbs said they will be speaking with the city’s legal department to fight the assessment, but wanted to wait for the hearing before taking any action.
“To go from $72 million down to $29 million as I’ve said before is ridiculous,” Hobbs said.
“Big corporations have to pay their fair share. We’re going to sure to send that message to MPAC and send that message to the government. We do have a reserve fund but I don’t want to dip into those reserves to pay back millions and millions to big a corporation.”
Hobbs added that he will leave it to council to decide if the city wants to offer support to those communities withholding MPAC payments.
“Mayor Nuttall said he may have to hand back the keys to the province for the town,” he said. “That’s how dire it is for these smaller communities.”
