Greater Sudbury’s elected officials have greenlit a 2024 tax plan with a 5.4-per-cent residential tax hike, 4.7-per-cent commercial tax jump and a 3.4-per-cent increase for industrial properties.
The decision came during tonight’s finance and administration committee meeting of city council, and moves on the 5.9-per-cent overall tax levy jump for 2024 they approved last year.
With only a couple of legislative changes to tax ratios in the city’s largely status-quo 2024 tax policy, it was unanimously approved without debate during tonight’s meeting.
City council’s in-depth budget debates took place last year, when they approved their first multi-year budget, which includes two years of operating budgets and four years of capital budgets.
The city will levy $406 million through property taxation this year, including $356 toward municipal operations and $50 million toward Greater Sudbury’s four school boards. Education tax rates remained frozen from last year’s, per the province’s direction.
Tax ratios represent the degree to which different property classes pay taxes, with residential properties representing a baseline of one. Since commercial taxes have a tax ratio of 1.912, they pay 1.912 times more in taxes per dollar of assessed value than residential properties.
The only change in ratios within the 2024 tax plan were to industrial rates, which the city is slowly easing down over multiple years to eventually hit the provincial threshold of 2.63, which they currently exceed. This year’s industrial rates decrease shifted $512,500 in budgeted tax revenue from industrial properties onto other property classes.
The 2024 tax ratios are as follows:
- Residential: 1
- New multi-residential: 1
- Multi-residential: 1.965
- Commercial: 1.912
- Industrial 3.452729 (down from last year’s 3.536525)
- Large industrial: 4.007861 (down from last year’s 4.105129)
- Pipelines: 2.179489
- Farm: 0.2
- Managed forest: 0.25
When it comes to residential properties, approximately half of property owners will see their taxes increase by less than $200 this year, while the average increase for all residential properties is $225.
These are overall numbers, however, and Greater Sudbury taxation carries a bit more nuance than that.
Area ratings also factor into the amount of money property owners pay in taxation, under which tax rates differ based on whatever fire and GOVA Transit services regions of the city receive.
These four classifications are career/urban (former City of Sudbury), composite/commuter (former City of Valley East), volunteer/commute (most all other areas of the City of Greater Sudbury) and volunteer (formerly unorganized areas).
For a residential property with an assessed value of $230,000, total 2024 taxation including municipal and education is:
- Career/urban: $4,008 (5.6 per cent increase from $3,794 in 2023)
- Composite/commuter: $3,841 (five per cent increase from $3,659)
- Volunteer/commute: $3,658 (5.2 per cent increase from $3,476)
- Volunteer: $3,520 (5.3 per cent increase from $3,343)
The past three years saw residents of the former City of Valley East face disproportionately large tax increases while the city gradually shifted the tax burden of adding eight career firefighters to Station 16 in Val Therese onto Valley East property owners alone instead of the general tax base.
This three-year process was completed in 2023, meaning that for the first time in four years residents of Valley East will face a tax increase slightly lower than other areas in 2024.
Tonight’s finance and administration committee decision to approve the 2024 tax policy still needs to be ratified by city council as a whole.
However, it appears likely that city council will approve it when they next meet, on April 30. The finance and administration committee was unanimous in tonight’s decision, and city council as a whole is made up of the same 13 members.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
