Schreiber residents to stop TransCanada traffic over property value concerns

SCHREIBER -- Lakefront property owners in Schreiber intend to slow traffic on the TransCanada Highway on Saturday to protest staggering jumps in their property assessments.   

A group made up of mostly seniors has announced its intention to picket and pamphlet on Highway 17 where it passes through the town 210 kilometres east of Thunder Bay. 

The Municipal Property Assessment Corporation has reassessed property values on Walker's Lake as being an average of 240 per cent higher this year. One such increase was as great as 858 per cent.

Keith Scott represents the lake's 39 property owners including his mother, who is seeing her modest home's value increase from $78,000 to $186,000. 

"When you're having an 84-year-old widow facing a 180 per cent increase where she's looking at 11 months of her pension to pay her municipal taxes -- and (Thunder Bay Superior North MPP) Michael Gravelle knows that -- it leaves nothing to pay the hydro bill, nothing to pay the exorbitant fuel oil bill, nothing for food," Scott said. 

"The disparity is just not sustainable."

That disparity is at the root of the movement that's stirring in Schreiber. According to the town's CAO Don MacArthur, the "vast majority" of properties in the municipality are being valued at $80,000 or less. While the average home now pays only $1,600 in taxes per year, the scales are about to tip and create a system of winners and losers, where some property owners will pay 500 per cent more in taxes than their neighbours. 

When McArthur was the town's mayor, he appealed to MPAC to mothball its 2012 assessments and reassess every property. He argued low assessments caused unfairly large tax increases for homeowners without a corresponding value to their homes. MPAC waited until this year to reassess and while some of the new rates are higher, McArthur said new assessments have developed a tilted playing field. 

"They may have overcorrected now," he said.

"Those who feel their values are too high are in the middle of the request for reconsideration process and we're hopeful that will be successful for them."    

MPAC vice president of municipal and stakeholder relations Carla Neil is scheduled to meet with Schreiber property owners in the community on Oct. 27.