A report was shared with Bruce County Council about the decreasing infrastructure revenue for power-generating properties.
Peter Frise, the Vice-President of Corporate & Client Services from Municipal Tax Equity, shared the decreasing impact of property tax paid by Bruce Power and the impact it has on the county.
The issue stems from provincial legislation that was put in place in the past.
He explained that many electricity-sector properties in general are treated differently than other properties, such as houses, farms, or businesses in valuation norms, meaning the amount they were assessed for is now a much smaller share of the tax burden on the host municipality, as well as the county.
“There’s also a similar methodology, not quite as static, for the water intake and discharge systems, which is a huge portion of nuclear generating stations. So these prescribed methodologies create a problem, because they create fixed values, and when you have fixed values within a market value system that is changing, even if the valuation stays the same for 10, 15, 20, 25 years, it becomes a smaller share, a smaller portion of the base,” said Frise. “Property taxes aren’t like any other tax, where we’re setting a rate and seeing how much we’re going to raise. It’s all based on share. We’re distributing share of the burden based on the share of the assessment base. That’s really what our tax rates do, and it’ s unique in that way. So as we have a fixed assessment that sits there for decade after decade and doesn’t change, it becomes a smaller share, and that’s what we’ve seen in that trend.”
Back in December, the issue was also discussed by Kincardine Council.
“One thing you touched on and I want to emphasize is that it’s not about Bruce Power, they are very aware and very supportive of our work in this regard. It’s not actually about OPG, it’s about provincial legislation that needs to be changed,” said Councillor Kenneth Craig. “The value to the county should not be underestimated. It’s not like a $20,000 bump in tax assessment, it’s a big number, but as he pointed out it’s a smaller share of a much bigger budget than what Kincardine produces, so I can only assure you that we are pursuing this for the benefit of Kincardine, but there’s a significant portion here that’s attributable to the county and we will continue to advocate through the channels that we have. If the county is able to support this by resolution or something that’s fine, but know that we are not in this advocacy by ourselves and there’s going to be benefits across many jurisdictions across Ontario, should the provincial government address this legislation gap.”
Deputy Warden Don Murray added his thoughts, saying that he felt that changes shouldn’t just be for nuclear power generation, but for wind and solar as well.
“I think we could have [gone] a little bit further with green energy projects, and wind and solar projects, and now with battery storage coming up, I think all of the ratepayers are going to be subsidizing [those] systems moving forward. We are subsidizing wind, any municipality with windmills know that assessment has been capped, so every little bit hurts all municipalities in this room. I think this is one part of it, but as we move forward, and they’re looking at more wind and solar, we should be advocating for better tax systems on them.”
Warden Luke Charbonneau shared that he felt that it was an important issue to advocate for.
“It’s about a share of the pie and so the question is how much are all other ratepayers paying as compared to how much large, or any, energy producer is paying and in this case that share paid by residents and farmers, and other tax classes are a greater proportion than they ought to be, if everything was fair and equal, so it really is a concern.”
Frise said that in order to bring the issue to the province’s attention, it has to in a way that will get the Ontario government’s attention.
“Right now I believe it is an issue, a political issue of getting on the agenda. Property tax is not on the province’s agenda, they’ve [the current government] never worked through a reassessment. They don’t want to talk about it. My advice has been, not from the tax, but from the policy person in me, has been to pursue this through the energy agenda, because that is high profile right now,” he explained. “That is what the province is looking at. If you push it through the property tax agenda, it’s not going to go anywhere and it hasn’t gone anywhere.”
