(File photo/battlefordsNOW staff)

By Angela Brown

Study Planned

SAMA says plan is to complete NB hotel and motel properties study by fall

Jul 6, 2020 | 4:06 PM

The Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency (SAMA) hopes to clear up what it believes is a misunderstanding related to timelines for a study on hotel and motel properties requested by the city.

The report will look at whether it would be suitable for hotels and motels in North Battleford to have property income factored in for tax assessment purposes.

While the City of North Battleford expected the investigation to be completed, the organization said it was not able to begin work on the project until after the COVID-19 restrictions started to lift. As a result, the project will likely be completed for this fall instead.

“We were going to be collecting income data in the summer. But it was on hold at that time due to the COVID-19 restrictions,” SAMA chief executive officer Irwin Blank said. “We had stopped collecting all income and expense information from business owners during that period because everybody was in lockdown.”

City council directed SAMA in April to start the process of conducting an analysis on incorporating the income approach to assessment for the hotel and motel properties within the city. But it later received correspondence from the Battlefords Hotels Association indicating the investigation does not appear to have been done as hotel properties were not contacted. Council approved a resolution expressing dissatisfaction with SAMA’s apparent lack of follow up on starting the investigation into the income approach study, and asked for the work to start immediately.

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Mayor Ryan Bater said the issue of concern was about “a promise being made and not kept.”

City manager Randy Patrick said as business was hurting due to the financial impact from the pandemic, there was hope the proposed methodology might be of assistance to them in the future potentially.

SAMA’s chief executive officer told battlefordsNOW SAMA plans are to start the study this week now that the province’s COVID-19 restrictions are beginning to lift.

“We had held back from sending any income and expense requests out, especially in March and April and into early May, because we knew the business owners were in a tough situation,” Blank said. “A lot of them were shut down and they were very short-staffed. We just wanted to be respectful of that at that time.”

He said SAMA will spend the next 60 days collecting information for the study and will then analyze the data.

“Hopefully the hotel property owners give us a very good response rate,” Blank said. “That will position us to be able to look to see if [the income approach for tax assessment purposes] is feasible for that community.”

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angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow