Photo: Shaun Penner / EverythingGP staff

By Curtis Galbraith

Downtown Business Improvement Tax

Tax relief request from downtown business operator denied by city council

Aug 10, 2021 | 7:33 AM

A downtown business operator went before city council for a second time Monday asking for some property tax relief, however no help was approved at the meeting.

Sawmill managing partner Joel Acton asked council for a break on Downtown Business Improvement Taxes for this year.

Council voted to receive Acton’s request for information, meaning no action will be taken at this time.

Acton had also asked for a break from property tax penalties in February, which was denied.

“Through COVID, of course, the hospitality industry has suffered greatly, as you can well imagine. Things are pretty tough in the business of hospitality, especially the restaurant business,” he said, adding the timing of the second and third wave of COVID-19 which led to closures for in-person dining came at very inopportune times.

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“The government could not have picked a worse time to shut us down. Our (busiest) time is when the government shut us down and they could not have picked a worse time to open us back up.”

Acton says the construction as part of Phase 4 of the Downtown Rehabilitation and Streetscapes Project has also impacted businesses, at a time they are typically slowest.

“Summertime, for our style of restaurant anyways, is pretty bad.”

Acton says other levels of government have helped out, and he is hoping the city will be able to do more to help businesses get through a tough time.

“My biggest thing is the federal government came to our assistance, the provincial government to came our assistance, but when it comes to the municipal government, they just flat said no, we can’t do anything about it,” Acton said.

“I find that very difficult to believe that there is nothing that can be done, but that’s the answer, the justification I got, for the answer of no.”

However, councillors said they would be willing to discuss other ways to try and support businesses, but they felt removing a tax that entirely funds the Downtown Association for marketing and advocating for downtown businesses specifically would not be the right way to go about it.

“I’m very sympathetic of the difficulties some businesses are having, especially in downtown right now. But, really, if council is going to not collect this tax, we only have two choices,” Councillor Dylan Bressey told his fellow councillors Monday.

“One is to subsidize downtown marketing activities with general municipal revenue… Or the other one is to ignore the Downton Association board… and say ‘sorry, we’re not going to give you a budget this year’.”

Mayor Jackie Clayton agrees that removing this tax would be unfair to other businesses who do not benefit from the Downtown Association’s work.

“If council was to consider removing this from collection this year, there would be impact overall to the city budget, which would mean, in turn, other businesses would be paying for enhancement and marketing opportunities that strictly highlight downtown.”

Clayton says council felt at this time that if the Downtown Association wanted to continue with these activities, it needed this revenue stream.

(With files from Shaun Penner)