By James Peters

Kamloops council sets tax rates, endorses efforts to drop heavy industry rates

Apr 17, 2018 | 11:57 AM

KAMLOOPS — Kamloops council has endorsed its direction on heavy industry taxation, despite a pause in efforts to drop the tax hits for those companies this year.

At a meeting this morning, the city set tax rates for all property classes, leaving the mill rate at 73.34 for heavy industry.

That means the two companies in that class, Tolko and Domtar, will have their tax bills virtually unchanged this year.

The city hopes it can drop those bills in the future by realizing more revenue from growth in that class, but that wasn’t the case in 2017 with the closure of Lafarge.

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Even so, councillors expressed hope for the future, with Mayor Ken Christian crediting the previously-introduced policy direction for millions in new improvements recently announced by Domtar.

“They were able to go to their head office and look at increases in equipment for the mill this year because of the policy we had put in place that year that essentially said to their board of directors, ‘Yes, go ahead, invest in Kamloops because you’re not going to get penalized for that investment’,” said Christian.

The mill rate for heavy industry in Kamloops remains significantly higher than comparable cities in BC this year.

The City of Kelowna, for example, has a heavy industry mill rate of 21.10.

Councillor Arjun Singh expressed concern that the inequity needs to change.

“It’s not so much for me around how much they pay; it’s the inequity they face competitively with other communities across the province in terms of getting the mill rates in line,” said Singh. “Historically, this is how it’s shaped up and it’s very challenging in the absence of getting new industry to actually bring that down, because other people have to absorb that.”

The average tax increase for Kamloops homeowners will be 2.08 per cent.