Residential tax rate up, commercial tax rate down in 2019 Mount Pearl budget

The City of Mount Pearl is raising the residential property tax rate — and dropping the commercial one — in a slimmed-down 2019 budget that cuts overall spending by nearly $4 million.

The $54.4 million budget, presented at city council's public meeting today along with the city's new five-year strategy, is $3.8 million less than the 2018 budget, representing a 6.5 per cent drop in spending. The city plans to spend $7.2 million on capital projects and infrastructure in 2019, $5.1 million less than in 2018.

"We wanted to be fair to our residents and business community, in that we made sure all of the needs of the entire community were met," said Coun. Andrea Power, co-chair of the corporate and community services committee.

The residential mill rate is going from seven to 7.4 mills — an increase of about 5.7 per cent — said Power, to offset a drop in assessed values that would have seen total residential tax revenue drop by about $500,000.

Power said 80 per cent of residents will see an increase of $10 a month or less.

The commercial property section of the budget is the opposite scenario; commercial property assessments have "skyrocketed," said Power, and city council is dropping the commercial property mill rate from 12 to 11.5, a drop of about 4.2 per cent.

Water rates remain unchanged: 2.3 mills for commercial properties, $600 for residential properties.

Residents can also expect increases in many fees for city services.

"It's not huge, but certainly with inflation and the cost of running our community centres and providing, again, that level of service that our residents and users are used to, we haven't had an increase in several years, so we felt that to keep up with the maintenance and the expectations of our users, we needed to do that this year," said Power.

The city will publish the full list of fees and rates online. Just a few examples: want to rent the Reid Centre for a children's birthday party? It currently costs $458. Next year it'll be $476. Drop-in fees for the Summit Centre are going up by 50 cents, as are admissions for public skating at the Glacier Arena. Speaking of the Glacier, renting the arena for a trade show or convention will cost $2,750 a day in 2019, versus $2,300 a day in 2018.

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