One of the hot-button topics heading into this municipal election will be the city’s contract with the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency (SAMA) and how property assessments are conducted.
This was a major discussion point during the Mayoral Candidate Forum hosted by the Moose Jaw and District Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday night.
The issue came to the forefront in September of 2022 when Bernie Dombowsky, owner of Charlotte’s Catering, presented to city council, raising red flags about commercial property assessments.
For example, his presentation showed that a vacant retail space on High Street was assessed with a value of $600,000, while a much larger law office across the street was assessed at $571,000.
Property owners then pay a percentage of the assessed value in property taxes.
He also showed city council that SAMA had 14 different cap rates in Moose Jaw, ranging from 3.09 per cent to 9.3 per cent, with the higher cap rate percentage paying fewer taxes.
In March of 2023, SAMA would drop the number of cap rates in Moose Jaw to 11.
Clive Tolley, who is seeking re-election as mayor, said his frustration with SAMA is boiling over.
“They don’t listen at all to me, as the mayor, or any of the councillors when we try and talk to them. They didn’t listen to Bernie Dombowsky and some of the others that stepped forward and showed examples that were obviously flawed,” Tolley said.
Tolley noted that SAMA’s contract expires at the end of 2025 and felt the city needs to start looking at alternatives and move on from SAMA at the end of the contract.
The city first entered into a contract to have SAMA conduct the property assessments in 2006. Before then, property assessments were done in-house.
Crystal Froese said she would not be opposed to returning the services back in-house.
“We did ask for a secondary audit and we were denied, and we didn’t really have any other alternative to go to. We have explored taking assessments back in-house and I’d be willing to continue to explore that,” she commented.
Froese did warn that there is also provincial legislation when it comes to property assessments and that the city must have an assessor.
James Murdock agreed that major changes don’t need to be made, but alternatives need to be discussed.
“We don’t have to recreate the wheel on this one, I don’t think. If there are other options, let’s explore them and if they’re better, let’s move in that direction,” Murdock said.
Kim Robinson said he would like to see a full-scale audit of the property assessment process and how SAMA is coming up with their property values.
“Fourteen cap rates is absolutely silly for a city our size, so I too would look at a very in-depth audit on how we are doing things,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mike Simpkins went in another direction. He felt the city needs to look outside of the box and completely change how property assessments are done.
“I think we need to create and look at different solutions and different ways of looking at it. Maybe, we could tax our residential homes by the lot size rather than by the actual building size,” Simpkins said.
You can watch the full candidates’ forum here.