St. Albert has once again ranked as the highest-taxed municipality in the Capital region, according to an annual survey by the City of Edmonton.
It costs $768 more a year in municipal taxes for a typical home in St. Albert versus the next highest municipality, which is Morinville.
Edmonton uses a 1,200-sq.-ft. bungalow between 25 and 30 years old as its benchmark property.
Such a home would command $2,438 in municipal taxes in St. Albert, compared to $1,670 in Morinville. Lowest on the list is Stony Plain at $1,208, followed by Fort Saskatchewan at $1,234.
St. Albert has topped the list every year that Edmonton has done the survey, which uses information provided by municipalities.
St. Albert fares slightly better when utilities costs are factored in.
Mayor Nolan Crouse has always pointed out that St. Albertans get more services than many of the municipalities on the list. He’s been recently spreading a message that St. Albertans receive value for their tax dollars. But he refused to discuss the report because he hasn’t seen it yet.
“The data is the data and I hope it would be a message of services and we don’t have enough non-residential development to compare ourselves to Fort Saskatchewan,” he said.
The numbers are what they are and they don’t look great when shown in a bar graph, admitted Coun. Wes Brodhead.
But he backed up the mayor’s oft-stated message.
“It’s about value. People come to St. Albert because the value that they see living in the community — great amenities, it’s a beautiful place to live,” he said.
“Nobody loves to pay taxes. It’s a matter of do you get your money’s worth?”
Brodhead noted that one graph in the report, for property taxes as a percentage of total taxes, had St. Albert at the high end but in line with other residential communities like Morinville, Stony Plain and Devon. Meanwhile, Fort Saskatchewan, Strathcona County and Edmonton were at the low end.
“In those communities they have heavy industry which contributes significant revenue to the city to offset service provision,” he said.
“In Strathcona and Fort Saskatchewan you have the smokestacks, something that we’ve always avoided in St. Albert.”
For Lynda Flannery of the St. Albert Taxpayers’ Association, the report is bad news that just keeps continuing.
“This shows quite clearly that the same house in St. Albert fares pretty poorly from a tax perspective regardless of how the costs are measured,” she said.
The report itself cautions against using the information to measure government efficiency because there are many variables that affect property tax differences between municipalities.
The full report can be viewed at www.edmonton.ca/business/economic_demographic/economic_information/residential-property-tax-utiliity-charges-survey.aspx
