Pending a review, the City of Sault Ste. Marie will be on the hook to Canadian Tire and Home Depot stores in that city for a partial reimbursement of city taxes collected from 2009-16, totalling $1.2 million.
Under the proposed settlement, the Soo will repay $931,740 to Canadian Tire and $306,010 to Home Depot. Soo-area school boards will also face refunding $333,803 to Canadian Tire and $122,996 to Home Depot.
Under the provincial Assessment Review Board, the payout was arrived at after settling numerous appeals regarding "decreased land value, lower sales, and changes in the replacement costs of building a new store," according to a SooToday article dated March 17.
From the same SooToday article: "Staff has the authority to sign off on the minutes of settlement on behalf of the municipality and will be doing so unless otherwise directed by council."
A similar property tax devaluation involving box stores, namely Canadian Tire, was a hot topic in Thunder Bay as far back as late 2016. In that city, a 30 per cent reduction in property values of the two local Canadian Tire sites has municipal government scrambling after an assessment revealed that Thunder Bay would owe repayments back to 2008. The retroactively reduced property values mean that Thunder Bay over-collected taxes going back almost a decade.
There has been no settlement regarding the North Bay box stores, but Chief Financial Officer Margaret Karpenko acknowledged, "Yes, it is on the City's radar."
Karpenko told BayToday, "The City of North Bay is at the forefront of assessment based management and we are an active party to all appeals in the City. We already are/have been a participating party in [similar] appeals."
Karpenko explained that "these types of assessment appeals occur all the time. To help mitigate any potential losses, the City ensures proper provisions are in place, i.e. set aside monies, as appeal processes become known."
Asked if the potential repayments could be damaging to City finances, especially since that money (since 2009 in the Soo's case) has already been budgeted for and spent, Karpenko replied: "We have a very progressive and sound assessment and management process that other municipalities look to for best practices. These practices enable us to mitigate losses associated with the appeals process and make appropriate provisions."
