Assessments — and taxes — going up on 244,000 New Brunswick properties

About 244,000 New Brunswick properties, including most homes, will be getting assessment and tax increases when bills are mailed out across the province next week but there will be no major changes to pulp and paper mill taxes - at least not yet.

Service New Brunswick's Valerie Kilfoil said a reevaluation of the six mills, requested by Premier Blaine Higgs and anxiously awaited in several communities, will not be complete until later this summer.

"Currently the Heavy Industrial Team is finalizing physical inspection of the mills and are busy analyzing data as it pertains to this industry," Kilfoil said in an email to CBC News.  

Service New Brunswick mails 470,000 assessment notices and $1.3 billion in associated tax bills to all New Brunswick property owners every March 1st.

Only 430,000 of those properties are subject to annual market fluctuations in value (timberland properties have had assessments frozen since 1994) and this year 244,000 of those market based assessments are going up.  

It's 60,000 more assessment increases than last year.  

According to Service New Brunswick most of the increases are small but 28,000 of the hikes will be five per cent or more. 

The agency also says there are 89,000 properties getting assessment reductions, and 136,000 that will remain unchanged although about 30 per cent of those are forest properties that benefit from an ongoing 26 year old assessment freeze.

Assessment increases in the province, driven by new construction, property improvement and growing market values, will be about $1.5 billion more than decreases and add more than $20 million to property tax bills.

Most of the larger increases will be dispersed throughout the province but one area that can expect a number of them is Haut-Madawaska.  Service New Brunswick conducted a "re-inspection" of properties in the rural northwestern community of 4,000 last year and assessments are increasing by an average of 6.8 per cent.

Also likely to see increases are residents of Gagetown.  The village suffered two straight years of property value declines following extreme flooding along the St. John River in 2018 and 2019 but values — and tax bills — are expected to rebound this year.

Assessments have yet to rebound for the province's six pulp and/or paper mills including two in Saint John and one each in Edmundston, Atholville, Nackawic and Lake Utopia.

In 2013 the group was collectively awarded assessment reductions of $130.7 million by Service New Brunswick because of an international  slump in markets. That saved the group $5.9 million per year in property tax, much of that paid to their host communities.

Last fall Service New Brunswick announced it was reviewing those reductions to see if markets for paper products had improved enough to undo some or all of the tax relief,  an issue of significant interest in the mill communities.

Last week Saint John Liberal MLA Gerry Lowe said he is open to supporting a Higgs government budget if he sees movement on industrial property tax issues and specifically mentioned the 2013 reduction won by mills as a sore point.

In response Premier Higgs said it was he who asked for the review and agreed property taxes should go back up if markets have changed.

"I have said these very words to the department: I want the same conditions looked at that caused those rates to go down and compare markets today," said the premier.

"Whatever conditions were set then and if they're different, then we should be applying that same logic and the rates should change accordingly."

But Kilfoil says the review is still ongoing with the aim of a September 1 completion date.  Any changes the review triggers would not take effect until 2021.