Permissive Tax Exemption
The Open Finance Standing Committee has approved the list of applicants for a permissive municipal tax exemption for 2015.
Town Council has set a cap on their permissive tax exemptions at 1.25 per cent of their 2014 tax requisition, which is $4.395 million. The estimated loss of revenue for approving all the applications is $48,015, which is under the 1.25 per cent cap, which means that all applicants will receive a 100 per cent tax exemption. Had the total exceeded the cap, the applicants would have only gotten a partial exemption.
The two reasons that the total amount was less than expected when the cap was set is because the assessed value of the GAI building, as well as a reduced number of applicants.
Given that the applications did not reach the cap, Coun. Keith Hern suggested lowering the cap in the future. The suggestion did not receive much support, and the application list was approved with no changes, and no formal plan to discuss lowering the cap in the future.
Highway Corridor Project
The Highway Corridor Enhancement project, the largest Resort Municipality Project Golden has undertaken, has been delayed for another year.
Council voted to cancel the tender process for Phase 1, and to retender the first phase of work early in the first quarter of 2015.
The project, which aimed to enhance and beautify the Highway 1 corridor, had a budget of more than $1 million. The details for the project came together later than expected, and when the call for tender closed in July there was only a single bid, which was considerably over the budget for the Phase 1 work.
