Nearly a month after Sechelt council voted to halve the permissive tax exemption on Girl Guide Camp Olave, no solutions have been found to the Guides' looming tax bill.
At the special meeting Oct. 30, where council passed the permissive tax exemption bylaw, Mayor Darren Inkster suggested the province might be able to provide a solution, either by assessing the camp property at a zero value or by agreeing to cover the non-municipal tax portion of the camp's tax bill.
But Minister of Community and Rural Development Bill Bennet has sent letters to Guides saying that neither course is viable. Firstly, he said, the Ministry does not have the legal authority to demand that the property be assessed at a zero value.
And Deborah Francis, deputy assessor with the B.C. Assessment's Vancouver - Sea to Sky office said, without a tax exemption, it's rare for a property to be assessed to a level where it won't pay tax. Factors that would lead to a lower assessment, she said, include the property being subject to the Agricultural Land Reserve or having nuisances or pollution.
"Those kinds of things can detract value so as to make the assessment so low as to not attract taxes to the value," she said. "But that is unusual unless the property has a statutory [for rural areas] or permissive [for municipalities] exemption."
Currently, Camp Olave is still waiting to hear the results of its property assessment, said Elaine Lake, chairperson of the Camp Olave management committee.
As to the suggestion that the province cover the non-municipal taxes on the Guide camp, Bennett said the District cuts no cheques to the province on Camp Olave's behalf.
"They pay nothing. There is no provincial component of the tax. There is no out-of-pocket cost to the municipality of Sechelt," he said.
But while District representatives concur that no cheque is being issued on the Guides' behalf, they say that giving the camp a permissive tax exemption concentrates the District's tax burden including both municipal and non-municipal taxes, such as hospital and regional district tax on a smaller number of taxpayers and directly impacts Sechelt taxpayers' tax bills.
According to figures provided by the District, an average Sechelt taxpayer, with a $400,000 residential property, will currently pay $64 on their tax bill to cover taxes not collected from tax-exempt properties. If Camp Olave had kept its full exemption, that figure would rise to $107.
"It's the residents who pick up the slack when properties are exempted," said Connie Jordison, the District's co-ordinator of council and community relations, pointing out that many Sechelt taxpayers are seniors. "So it's a very hard impact."
Inkster said that he had hoped the province would have been able to do more for the Guides.
"It's becoming clearer that the options available to [the province] are less than I had hoped," he said. "But also they have financial challenges as well."
Inkster said Sechelt remains open to working with the Guides to look for solutions.
"I think our council would be amenable to looking at the issue again once the reassessment comes in," he said.
And Bennett, in turn, said the issue is Sechelt's and Sechelt's alone.
"They [Sechelt] have now made a choice to tax [the Guides]. That's their decision. They have nowhere to hide in terms of owning up to that decision. It's their decision and they have to live with the consequences, and I wish, frankly, that they'd stop pointing fingers at the province because we had nothing to do with their decision," said Bennett.
Lake said Camp Olave hasn't officially petitioned the province, but based on Bennett's letter, she doesn't expect the province can do much for them.
"The only thing that the province could do would be perhaps at the provincial government level to get some sort of legislation in place for camps," she said.
As to other avenues for a solution, she said that neither the provincial nor national levels of the Girl Guides organization will be able to help the camp.
And the threat of the tax bill continues to hang over Camp Olave.
"Where we'll get this money, I don't know," she said. "If, after all this investigation and whatnot, if it comes down that we have to pay it, then I guess we'll have to get the money somewhere, but I don't know where. And we cannot keep doing it [every year]. We cannot."
But for now, she said, Camp Olave will continue to wait for the assessment results before planning its next move.
"It's not over, but right now we're sort of playing a waiting game," she said. "As soon as I get my ducks in a row, then I'll go and see the mayor, perhaps."
