Mayor Ames Leslie, left, and CAO John Enns-Wind look at outstanding taxes at council's recent meeting. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

Tackling Taxes

Town encourages residents in arrears to contact town to arrange to pay taxes owing

Oct 9, 2019 | 5:00 PM

The Town of Battleford is encouraging people to pay their taxes in arrears to ensure the town doesn’t have to take action that could put their properties at risk.

CAO John Enns-Wind gave an update on outstanding taxes from a report from Finance Director David Gillan at council’s recent meeting.

As of Oct. 2, the town is owed about $1.1 million in total. This amount reflects $334,338 in arrears, and for the 2019 tax year $766,386 outstanding.

There are various options to help people pay their taxes. Through the Municipalities Act, the Town is also able to garnish rent as a means to collect overdue tax.

In a worst-case scenario, when people don’t pay their taxes the town may have no other option but to go through the process to dispose of the property.

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“This is not the route that administration wants to go, and we make it clear to council, we wish people would come in and make arrangements with David [Gillan],” Enns-Wind said. “David is very reasonable, but there are some outstanding amounts in this area. Unfortunately, they haven’t come in to talk. And if they don’t talk to us, we can’t work with the amount to bring their arrears to current.”

Enns-Wind did commend the work of Gillan to reduce the amount in arrears by 50 per cent since Dec. 31, 2018.

The CAO said Gillan and the finance team have been on track in helping bring down the amount owing by contacting people to arrange payment plans to help them pay their amounts outstanding wherever possible.

Mayor Ames Leslie concurred.

“Good job to the finance team for staying diligent on it,” said Leslie. “They are never easy discussions.”

The mayor said for anyone who has taxes outstanding all they need to do is contact the town hall.

“Nobody is saying you have to pay everything right now,” Leslie said. “I hope residents don’t think that is the case. With a simple phone call to the finance department, they can help make a repayment plan. They can talk about options and ways to get the balance cleared up. The more we can have these discussions, the more we can avoid having to take any legal action, and try and collect the taxes that are owed.”

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angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow