The City of Lacombe will be raising taxes to accommodate and maintain a balanced budget for 2019. However, higher than anticipated assessment growth for 2018 allowed city administration to shift funding around and maintain a property tax rate increase of only 2.8 percent.

City of Lacombe Mayor, Grant Creasy believes that the tax increase turned out in the best possible way for Lacombe’s property owners and that Council played a large part in keeping the increase to a minimum.

“I am not going to suggest that luck is a factor it is, in fact, good management. There were some items that did go our way which is welcome and we’re glad that the overall picture turned out to be a positive one,” explained Creasy.

An increase such as this will assess a home of 380,006 dollars valued at a total tax increase of 138 dollars. Whereas a home valued at 773,069 dollars will see a total tax increase of 361 dollars. As a result, the city will receive approximately 20.06 million dollars in property taxes.

For now, being that the education property tax requisition has not been released provincially due to the recent election, council administration is at a bit of a stand-still in regards to what they should collect and plan for in the budget on that regard.

“I just suggested that it is unfortunate that we’re in a position whereby we can’t plan for where a potential increase may be and it’s very unfortunate when every single municipality in Alberta faces the same thing when it’s just guesswork,” said Creasy.

Looking into 2020, Creasy didn’t say whether taxes would be increasing or decreasing.

“It’s very easy to keep the budget to whatever numbers the public demands it to be kept to. On the flipside, there may have to be an adjustment to the services that are provided.”

For now, tax notices will be mailed by the end of May and the deadline for paying taxes without penalty will be July 2nd, 2019.