Mapleton is writing off $1.6 million in assessment and refunding almost $5,000 to 16 properties.
“These are structures that have either been demolished, razed by fire or moved off of people’s property,” explained Teresa Armstrong, deputy treasurer and tax collector.
“They have the right … to have their assessment reduced, which ultimately ends in having their taxes reduced.”
Property owners submit a form if a structure has been removed or if there has been a class change. The form is then submitted to the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC), which in turn advises the township of the revised assessment. The township then adjusts taxes based on the new assessment.
The total refund for 2016 is $4,910 to 16 properties that had removed driving sheds, bank barns, silos and/or houses. One refund was due to fire destroying the house and another due to the house being “unusable.”
Councillor Lori Woodham asked for clarification on the “unusable” house prior to the meeting and found it has no windows, hydro or heat.
“How would we ever monitor that … (what if) a year down the road the property owner fixes it up as a house and doesn’t have to pay taxes?
“Where is our follow-up system?” she asked.
Mayor Neil Driscoll said it was a good question and he thought “that would be a bylaw enforcement issue, which would come from our building department.”
Armstrong said the problem lies in the building permit.
“If they get a building permit, it’s easy to track, that gets sent on to MPAC. The difficulty rises when there’s no building permit taken out,” said Armstrong.
“So far we’ve been lucky, we haven’t had it as an issue … we can look at options on what way we can track these. At this point we haven’t really had any conversations about it.”
Driscoll said council has thought about changing the system before.
“We only respond to written complaints, where I do think there’s a time and a place where we do have to change that model and let our bylaw officer do more investigating on their own,” the mayor said.
“There’s a lot of issues out there that I do think we are missing and we have vehicles that travel this municipality everyday that could see these changes, so possibly that would be dealt with.
“How do we give direction to change that? I think we would have to ask staff to come back to us, but that should come from our building department.”
Driscoll said he will send an email to the building department to ask if they can accommodate more and that any proposals for change be presented at the next council meeting.
“It was nice to hear from the auditor that our municipality is one of the lowest as far as taxes not being paid,” Driscoll added.
Council received the report for information and had no objections to the value write off. Councillor Marlene Ottens declared a conflict of interest as her property is in the report.
