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We acknowledge the
financial support of the
Government of Canada
through the
Canada Periodical Fund
of the Department of
Canadian Heritage.

Volume 134 Issue 43

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Friday, January , 2017

www.minnedosatribune.com

90 cents plus tax

Town Paying $700,000 Back To Husky

By HILLARY CAMPBELL

he Town of Minnedosa
will be repaying money to Husky Oil Limited,
due to Husky appealing
their Minnedosa Ethanol
Plants 2013 assessment
to the Municipal Board of
Manitoba. The appeals
commenced in 2013, continued in 2014 and 2015
before being finally dealt
with in 2016, with the
result that the Town of
Minnedosa now owes approximately $600,000, plus
interest to Husky, which
will come to $700,000.
The Town will be repaying the amount in four
annual installments, the
fi rst of which has already
been paid, for 2016. The
amount of each installment will be $175,000.
The ethanol plant assessment has been lowered by a significant value, which means that the
Town will be bringing in
less money from the commercial sector.
The Towns budget is
based on taxes from both
residential and commercial sectors, and with the
lowered Husky assessment
the impact will be felt by
others. That means that in
order to come up with the
same amount of money,
then the tax burden will be
spread over the residential and other commercial
classifications of property,
stated Mayor Ray Orr. This
means that residential and

Photo by Darryl Holyk

other commercial taxes

may increase, in order to
accommodate the budget
that is in place, not to mention any increase in spending that may arise. However, at this point, Mayor Orr
is not able to predict how
much of an increase this
will cause.
In addition to a lower
tax amount coming in
from Husky, the Town also
needs to repay the overtaxed funds from the past
four years. However, a

portion of funds coming in

were remitted to the School
Division, yet the Town is
currently being held accountable for 100% of the
funds to be repaid, which
means that it is repaying
funds that it never held in
the fi rst place. Mayor Orr
has spoken with the School
Divisions superintendent
and the chairperson, and
has alerted them to the
situation, and that he will
be taking issue with the
school divisions and pro-

vincial portion of the funds

to the Province.
Mayor Orr noted that
there is a reserve of funds
that have been set aside
for this type of situation,
however, the reserve
didnt contemplate this
sort of thing happening
and after the first payment, as you can imagine,
the payment pretty well
cleaned out the reserve.
As of now, there are still
three payments left to be
made.

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One thing that causes

Mayor Orr concern is
that it took such a great
amount of time to resolve
the assessment appeal.
Had it been dealt with in
a shorter period of time,
the Town would owe less
in back-taxes and interest. Another concern is
the impact that this could
have on upcoming community projects.
We are going to have
to look at our spending,
we are going to have to

see if there is anything in

there that is optional, anything that we absolutely
dont have to spend and
can we cut back on that
for a year or two until we
get this sorted out, said
Orr, when considering
ways that the Town can
come up with the funds.
He added, when discussing any tax increase, that
Town Council is going to
try to keep it as reasonable as we can.

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