The District of Lantzville is one step closer to repaying more than $47,000 that it accidentally charged to property owners over a 12-year period.
On Monday, Lantzville councillors approved a refund program that will cost $47,889.09. The decision comes after a report to council earlier this year indicated that between 2003-15 the District of Lantzville incorrectly charged parcel taxes on those who owned a mobile or manufactured home.
According to the report, district staff mistakenly applied a regional parks and trails parcel tax from 2007-12, a recycling parcel tax between 2003-16 and a sanitary sewer parcel tax between 2007-15 to manufactured home owners in Lantzville. They also failed to correctly apply a grant to 24 property owners between 2003-16.
The accounting mistakes weren’t discovered until last year and led councillors to hire Lynda Sowerby, deputy director of financial services, to clean up the mess and oversee a refund program.
During Monday’s meeting, Lenora Lee, chartered accountant with KMPG, addressed some of councillors questions about the parcel tax and home owners’ grant errors following a presentation she gave about the district’s 2016 financial situation.
She said KPMG, which has preformed the district’s financial audits since 2003, applies a risk-based approach to its audits and because the errors ranged from zero to $514 per year for each affected owner, her company wouldn’t have noticed the mistakes since they were small and built up over time.
“That magnitude of discrepancy generally wouldn’t be something that we would note in any individual year,” she said. “The cumulative amount certainly is larger, but in any given year we would look to have the differences from the previous year vary significantly to cause us to investigate further.”
Lee told councillors the responsibility lies with the property owner to ensure that they aren’t paying more than they should be.
“They are presumed to monitor their own payments and to self-identify,” she said.
The district will use money from its general surplus and sewer surplus funds to cover the cost of refunding those effected by the errors. The provincial government is expected to cover $5,580.24 of the refunds.
