Council working to ease burden for business owners

CALGARY (660 NEWS) – It was a marathon session at city council Tuesday, as councillors debated on how to help business owners, as high property taxes continue to plague the downtown core.

Non-residential taxes are down $250-million annually due to the downturn in the economy and a decline in property values.

The Finance Committee decided to not proceed with any kind of recommendation and will instead leave it up to council.

An option that was put forward was to re-distribute funds over to residential taxpayers and then use a rebate to phase in any tax increase.

“So if you think about it in quite simplistic terms, if you give a business a hundred dollars to apply against a million dollar tax bill, it’s not a lot, if you give a homeowner a hundred dollars to apply against a $2,000 tax bill, that’s a much different situation,” said Ward 3 Councillor Jyoti Gondek, “it is not popular, I understand that I’m already getting the onslaught of messages about Gondek loves taxes – this is a decision that should have been made years ago.”

Mayor Naheed Nenshi has concerns about implementing a tax shift and pitting residential against non-residential taxpayers but says everyone involved on Tuesday agreed on one thing.

“The real message to take from today is every single member of that committee and I will say every single member of council, understands that we have to support small business in this community,” said Nenshi.

The committee will have a couple of weeks to go back to the drawing board as they try to determine the best solution, but Nenshi warns they don’t have that much money.

“So based on the discussions that council had last night, there’s probably about 70 million dollars and the question is how do we take that 70 million dollars in the way that is the most effective in putting money in the pockets of these businesses now, without unduly harming residents, residential taxpayers, homeowners.”

“There is a scale, if you think, of what we can do with that 70 million dollars and what we think will have the most impact, is it straight up tax reductions, is it a grant program to help businesses that are really in more trouble, are there ways that we can better focus the help instead of giving the same amount to everyone, which is what we have done in the past, those are the questions that we are going to explore very quickly over the next couple of weeks.”

Council will decide on a path forward at their March 18th meeting.