Image Credit: CFJC Today / Kent Simmonds

By Jill Sperling

Tax Increase

Merritt council pairs tax increase with utility rate discounts

Apr 22, 2020 | 4:13 PM

MERRITT — The City of Merritt is hoping to ease some financial strain on residents during the pandemic by increasing discounts on utility rates.

At a virtual City Council meeting last night (Apr. 21) the decision was made to increase the property tax rate by 2.4 per cent.

In order to offset this increase for residents struggling financially, council has also made changes to its utility rates.

“We certainly realize the concerns of our residents and some of the issues that we’re having,” said Merritt CAO Scott Hildebrand. “We’ve actually been able to offset that with an increased discount from 10 per cent to 17 per cent in our utility rates for both residential and commercial customers. This offset basically allows the net result to be at the same as last year or even lower for the majority of our residents.”

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Hildebrand says the tax increase allows the city to continue to work on key infrastructure projects.

The city has also been bringing back some of the staff that were laid off when the COVID-19 pandemic began affecting the region.

“About 60 per cent of our staff would have been laid off,” Hildebrand said. “We have a lot of casual folks that work in our recreational facilities, that’s where it started, and then there were some full time staff as well that were laid off. But, we’ve been slowly bringing them back in public works and development services and some of the admin positions to make sure that our payroll continues to move forward, our accounts payable and some of the processes we need to operate.”