Have you reviewed your tax bill?
What is the total tax payer cost of the Frank Venables Auditorium?
Below is the detailed explanation of the amount we are now paying on our taxes to fund this single venue received from the Town of Oliver:
Were you aware? I was not. Did you know the full amount residents and businesses (two and a half times the residential rate) were going to have to pay in tax prior to voting in the referendum on the matter?
We’re still paying for the renovations of the building prior to it burning down and it’s lumped together in one tax. Question remains of when the renovations will be paid off which should result in a tax reduction.
Are you happy paying this amount or would you rather this go towards our local policing, health care or other?
Should we have another vote?
Mike Beaulieu
Here’s the quoted explanation from The Town of Oliver:
“There are a few layers to this inquiry that need to be addressed.
Mr. Beaulieu’s overall confusion is coming from the fact that he is taking a mill rate generated by the RDOS (to determine their tax requisition) and simply applying that rate to his Oliver residences. Below I have summarized the process the RDOS goes through in setting their mill rates and how the Town applies that to our residents.
- When the RDOS set their mill rate for this service, the overall requisition, based on an approved budget, ($108,000 – according to the RDOS CFO) was determined by taking the net taxable values for ALL of the properties within the service area (in this instance the service area is the Town of Oliver and Area C). Once they calculated the Total requisition, they calculated each partner’s share ($61,510 was the Town of Oliver’s share in 2015).
- Once the Town was made aware of our share for this service – $61,510, we were required to collect that amount from the residents of Oliver. We did this by dividing the requisition amount of $61,510 by the net taxable land and improvements IN OLIVER which worked out to be $.0750 per $1,000 of assessed value for a Class 1 residential property and $0.1837 per $1,000 of assessed value for a Class 6 Business.
- To complicate matters just a bit, are the ongoing annual debt payments required to pay off the renovation at the Frank Venables Theater (this was also approved by way of referendum back in 2008). Again, as in the first bullet above, the RDOS set their mill rate to ensure the entire cost of the debt was being covered by the Entire service area (again, both the Town of Oliver and Area C). The Town’s portion of this debt was $112,115. Therefore, after allocating this cost out to Oliver Assessments only, the mill rate worked out to be $0.1366 per $1,000 of assessed value for a Class 1 residential property and $0.3348 per $1,000 of assessed value for a Class 6 Business.
- As both of the above costs pertain to the Frank Venables Theater, and both are calculated based on net taxable values of land and improvements, we combined the calculated mill rates above into one rate and showed this as one line on our 2015 property tax notices. So in Mr. Beaulieu’s example below the combined tax rate for his Class 1 residential property is $0.2116 per $1,000 ($.0750 + $0.1366) and his combined tax rate for his Class 6 Business property is $0.5185 per $1,000 ($0.1837 + $0.3348).
So as you can see from the above, the RDOS requisition for the Frank Venables Servicing Agreement was $108,000, which is well under the maximum requisition amount of $160,000 or $0.14 per $1,000 of net taxable values allowed in the establishing bylaw. I hope the above explanations are understandable as municipal tax calculations are often complex and difficult to explain.
If there are any further questions feel free to contact me.”
David Svetlichny, CA
Chief Financial Officer
Town of Oliver