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MPAC reassessments threatening Northwestern Ontario communities

THUNDER BAY -- The mayor of Terrace Bay says the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation is “killing” one-industry towns across Northwestern Ontario.
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Terrace Bay Mayor Jody Davis said MPAC reassessments are "killing" single industry towns in Northwestern Ontario. (Matt Vis, tbnewswatch.com)

THUNDER BAY -- The mayor of Terrace Bay says the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation is “killing” one-industry towns across Northwestern Ontario.

That’s what Jody Davis said to his fellow delegates on Friday at the Thunder Bay District Municipal League meeting after a presentation by an MPAC representative.

Davis said his community’s mill was valued at $15 million in 2012, a sharp decline from when it was assessed at $50 million in 2000 despite there being no visible changes in how the facility is run.

“I don’t understand how you can continually operate the same plant at the same capacity, with the same amount of people and have the assessment of the property be reduced,” he said.

“I’ve heard about economic obsolescence but our houses keep on getting older and we maintain them and the value of those may go up or down. With the industrial properties their value seems to go down regardless.”

In 2000 the mill paid $3 million in taxes to the community, which represented half of their tax base. That number is now less than $1 million after three reassessments lowered the value of the property.

The uncertainty of future reassessments is crippling to the municipality’s budgets and long-term planning.

“We wonder if this will continue through the next reassessment period because each time it happens it really impacts the community,” Davis said.

“How do we plan for the future when we don’t know what our assessment base will be?”

James Harris, MPAC valuation and customer relations manager, provided a 30 minute presentation outlining the assessment process for residential properties.

After the presentation he was bombarded with questions from municipal leaders asking about how industrial and commercial properties are assessed, especially with the threat of commercial assessment appeals beginning to emerge.

“The takeaway is to get together with my senior manager to discuss some possibilities in ways of looking at how these assessments should be arrived at,” he said.

“Now that I’ve seen a lot of the questions that have come forward now I definitely see there is an industrial problem.”

Municipal officials from Thunder Bay, Marathon and O’Connor among others asked questions following the presentation. Harris said many of their concerns would have to be addressed by the provincial Ministry of Finance, which oversees MPAC.

Davis said he would like to see solutions achieved collaboratively with the province and communities getting together.

“It seems to go around in circle. We’d like to get MPAC and the Ministry of Finance together with municipal bodies like (the Association of Municipalities Ontario) and (Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association) to work together so we can stabilize the tax assessment field process for communities with large industrial and commercial bases,” Davis said.





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