Assessments 101 with the City of Terrace: Terrace offers property assessment guidance for residents

With some of their residents looking at an increase of 20 percent plus in their home assessments, the City of Terrace would seem to be looking to head off a few phone calls to City Hall, with an information campaign for residents of that city as to what may lay ahead when it comes to property tax time.

Yesterday, the City of Terrace took to social media with a presentation and links to further information related to the relationship between the BC Assessments arriving in mailboxes this week and the annual call for property taxes for later this year.

The key point that the City of Terrace makes in their information release is that a high assessment does not mean that a commensurate amount of increased taxation may be on the way.

"The most important factor is not how much your assessed value has changed, but how your assessed value has changed relative to the average change for your property class in your municipality or taxing jurisdiction. 

By law, municipalities are not allowed to collect more property tax revenue than what is needed for a balanced budget. Therefore, the City of Terrace finance team will recalculate the tax rate each year for each property class, ensuring that only the tax revenue that is needed is collected, taking into consideration the change in the assessed value."

The information campaign includes this link to more information from that community's finance office.

As we outlined last week, property owners in both Terrace and Kitimat saw significant increases to their Assessments when BC Assessment released their data last Thursday.

Prince Rupert for the most part saw only a three percent increase, you can look up the new assessment level for your property from this search engine from BC Assessments.

The City of Prince Rupert has not as of yet, launched its own New Year's information campaign, however they do host a wide range of resources related to property values on the City of Prince Rupert website.

Included in that information stream is the following video that helps to explain the relationship between Property Assessments and the City's work on budget issues.




For residents who believe that their new assessed value may be wrong, they have until the end of this month to file an appeal with BC Assessments, you can learn more about how to do that here.

For more notes related to Housing in the Northwest see our archive page here.

Items of interest related to the City of Terrace and City of Prince Rupert can be explored from our archive pages below

City of Terrace Archive
Prince Rupert City Council Discussion themes


Cross posted from the North Coast Review.