The launch of a community petition on Friday, which is aimed at the current provincial approach to taxation on Prince Rupert Port Authority property, has a number of the recently confirmed candidates for Prince Rupert City Council beginning to engage in the discussion.
Their contributions through their various social media pages, answering the call of local populism that has been introduced, spurred on by the call of loyalty to the cause for those seeking elected office that made for the final lines of the introduction to the plan on Friday.
Towards the reception to that initiative, a recent social media message over the weekend from the Mayor observed that the petition quest had gained 200 signatures within twelve hours of its launch on Friday.
A review of the talking points above and the lengthy amount of material provided through the #ScraptheTax website, has squarely put the bullseye both on the current BC NDP government, as well as on some of the large industrial groups, some of them among largest of local employers which are currently operating as part of the PRPA footprint.
The petition initiative is a project that clearly has come out of the recent State of the City presentation of outgoing Mayor Lee Brain and the ongoing work to the topic from Council member Blair Mirau who is also departing from civic office.
Their narratives of the last few months making for the focus for the Scrap the Tax planning and petition.
And so to gain some perspective on how the Prince Rupert Port Authority may view the latest salvo in the debate, we contacted the Port to hear their side of the latest community initiative.
In response to our query on the view from the Cow Bay offices of the Port, Katherine Voigt, Manager of Corporate Communications for the PRPA provided comments to the issue that tackled two themes.
The first segment providing some notes on the background to the BC Ports Property Tax and how it fits into the revenue and compensation structure for the Port.
The Prince Rupert Port Authority (PRPA), port tenants and the City of Prince Rupert comply and work within the tax revenue structure and government compensation framework as set out by applicable federal and provincial laws. The BC Ports Property Tax Act is one element of that.
The objective of BC's Ports Property Tax Act and its resulting cap is to provide a stable, predictable, and competitive tax environment to drive investment in terminals, and corresponding employment growth, economic opportunity, and new property tax sources.
The capped tax rate is comparable to average and median industrial tax rates across BC.
In addition to these tax revenues, compensation is provided to host communities by the provincial government based on assessments and tax rates that prevailed when the program was introduced, increased annually by inflation.
The second and concluding portion of the response to our questions focused on themes more specific to the City of Prince Rupert and how the current arrangement has worked
For context, in Prince Rupert, taxes remitted to the municipality from terminals subject to the tax cap were $3.6 million in 2021 and supplemented by a compensation grant of $1.8 million. This represents growth of 70% since the Act was introduced in 2004.
When considering all revenue from Port sources, municipal tax revenue has grown from $4.9 million per year in 2011 to $12.4 million in 2021—a 153% increase in the last 10 years, resulting in one of the strongest municipal industrial tax bases in BC.
The City of Prince Rupert receives the vast majority of these revenues, and they made up 43% of the City’s net tax revenue in 2021.
In Prince Rupert specifically, there’s been over $1 billion in private sector capital investment since the Port Property Tax Act came into place that has contributed to the growth of approximately 2,000 jobs locally associated with port operations today.
PRPA acknowledges that the City of Prince Rupert is facing financial challenges related to addressing aging municipal infrastructure; however, the cause cannot be attributed to a shortfall of port-related tax revenues. -- Statement from the Prince Rupert Port Authority provided to the NCR by Katherine Voigt, Manager Corporate Communications
The port has also offered up a link towards more information related to port-related property taxation in Prince Rupert and the four ways in which municipalities receive tax revenue from port properties.
Since the BC Liberals also appear to be part of the chronicle and target for the community #ScraptheTax initiative, the local North Coast BC Liberal Association has tried to navigate some choppy waters on the issue, the group providing a short overview through some social media messaging on the weekend as to how they view the situation.
Should we gain a reply, we'll follow up on the MLA's commentary towards the issue.
With its introduction on Friday, the petition initiative is now firmly established among the percolating Municipal election themes for the upcoming campaign.
One element of the potential dominance of the topic on the campaign moving forward, may be to also deflect some of the attention away from the record of civic governance of the last eight years for the current council membership and those running for re-election in support of their work in that period.
The record of the last four to eight years from those seeking office, is something that voters and those following the campaign should strive to ensure retains prominence, serving as a key area of review that will direct the conversation as the campaign moves towards Election Day.
You can follow the the candidates Social media streams, to see how those running for the Mayoralty and Council for Prince Rupert may begin to speak to the topic as we move into the spring to the October 15 vote.
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