St. Albert City Council has finalized it's 2025 tax rate bylaw. Passing unanimously, the bylaw sees a municipal tax rate increase of 2.9 per cent, although some councillors were frustrated that some of the work to get that number down was slightly offset by the province's education property tax (EPT) increase.
The municipal levy increase for both residential and non-residential properties is 2.9 per cent, down from the 3.6 per cent that was forecast during budget deliberations in December 2024. A large part of that was attributed to new assessment growth, which came in at 2.99 per cent for 2024.
The EPT levy increased by 7.4 per cent for residential properties and 9.3 per cent for non residential. The Homeland Housing levy — which is an non-profit organization that manages seniors housing in different Alberta municipalities including St. Albert, Morinville, and Sturgeon County — did increase, but because of growth it shows up as a slight -0.2 per cent decrease for residential, and -0.9 per cent for non residential properties senior manager for assessment and taxation Stephen Bannerman told council.
Overall, the average increase for a typical residential property will be 3.9 per cent, and 4.2 per cent for non-residential properties.
Councillors echoed their sentiments from their April 15 council meeting that they were proud to get the municipal tax increase down to 2.9 per cent, but had frustrations of passing off the province's EPT increase onto residents.
"I feel frustrated that we have zero control -- not that I would expect any of us here to have control over this -- and yet we're passing it on and it's such a substantial increase," Coun. Sheena Hughes said.
"I appreciate that this is a year that we've managed to keep the tax rate reasonable," Coun. Wes Brodhead said. "And our hard work here was somewhat overcome by the very large increase to the educational requisition but that's a different story."
Brodhead added that he thinks council does have the opportunity to celebrate at least a little bit.
"It's never a good day when we're passing tax rate increase bylaws, but in the overall scheme of things I think this is a reasonable outcome of the past year," Brodhead said.
The municipal tax split for 2025 will see 79.5 per cent come from residential properties, while 20.5 per cent will come from non-residential.
Servus Place paid off
Also included in the report is the Servus Credit Union capital levy, which commenced in 2005 and represents the annual debenture payment payable for the initial construction costs of Servus Place. 2025 marks the final year the levy will be in effect and appear on property tax notices, with the levy decreasing to $2.017 million in 2024 and decreasing again to $377,326 in 2025.
E-billing
Property owners should receive their assessment notices and taxation slips in the mail by May 16, approximately two weeks earlier than last year in anticipation that there could be an impending Canada Post strike. Residents are responsible to pay by June 30.
Additionally, residents can now receive their assessment notices online. To register, residents can go to MyCity with the roll number and access code from their last tax bill, and they can pay their taxes with their credit cards.
