More than 90,000 Ottawa property owners face tax hike
Last Updated: Friday, October 24, 2008 | 10:00 AM ET
CBC News
More than 90,000 Ottawa property owners will find out Monday that the value of their homes has gone up, and many of them will be paying higher taxes.
Another 100,000 residents will get the news that their homes have dropped in value, and they will pay less tax.
On average the value of residential properties will be up by about 14 per cent, according to the city treasurer, Marian Simulik, but some areas will be hit harder than others.
The new assessments have been mailed out by Ontario's Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC), and should arrive in mailboxes by Monday.
The biggest upward shift in value will be to homes in the downtown Somerset and Kitchissippi wards.
But some rural wards will be hit as well, as farm values have risen.
People facing tax increases will pay them over a four-year period.
A spokesman for MPAC, Marcel Clement, said it will be easier this year for property owners to compare assessments on the corporation's website.
"There's bound to be a few errors. If there's an error on the property, guess what, we'll fix it," Clement said.
Three years ago, Ottawa led the province in assessment increases. This time around it's well below the average of 20 per cent.
Not everyone believes the new assessments are fair.
A downtown realtor with Re/Max, Ian Hassell, said the increases put a disproportionate burden on people downtown, even though suburban development costs the city more in terms of building roads, water pipes, sewers and hydro.
Hassell said the system is particularly unfair because downtown residents typically use infrastructure that was built decades ago.
This is first new assessment since 2006 when the Ontario government told MPAC to revamp its system.
This followed a scathing review of the system by Ontario Ombudsman André Marin, in which he called MPAC's system "secretive, inaccurate and unfair."
He made 22 recommendations to fix the system, and MPAC said it could take until 2009 to incorporate all the changes. It appears they have managed to make those changes a year earlier than expected.
