Policy Win: Predictable and Fair Market Value Assessments

One of the central purposes of a Chamber of Commerce is to act as a conduit for conversation between the business community and all levels of government. In Medicine Hat, our business community shares the challenges they are experiencing through our regular Policy Council meetings and ad hoc task force meetings.  During and following these meetings, the Chamber gathers information from our members experiencing similar issues and works to advocate for logical, measured changes to regulations to ease the burdens experienced by our businesses. Ultimately, our goal is to work with government and administration to create win-win situations where government is able to perform its duties and our business community is able to continue to grow and thrive.

A great example of this system working is the Medicine Hat & District Chamber of Commerce’s municipal Predictable and Fair Market Value Assessments policy. This policy resulted from challenges that surfaced with commercial assessments in 2013. A task force was established with local stakeholders and several recommendations were made to the City of Medicine Hat. The Assessment Department, particularly under the leadership of the City Assessor, Sue Sterkenburg, worked diligently to ensure the implementation of a number of improvements over the past years.

In particular, some of the highlights of the progress that was made are:

• Three separate approaches to value are used when conducting the mass appraisal of non-residential property, recognizing that not all three approaches are used simultaneously and reconciled on each property.
• The Assessment Department has sent yearly Assessment Request for Information (ARFI) to property owners to increase the database for lease rates, vacancies, expenses, and sales verification data. To further strengthen the available data, the Assessment Department and commercial realtor’s group are resuming yearly meetings to discuss market conditions and assessment analysis results.
• The department has committed to improving the valuation process for income approach to non-residential properties with improvements made to the vacancy rates. Since the 2018 tax year, the vacancy rate application was applied based on type (retail, office, industrial, mini-storage), and location (downtown, not downtown). This application eliminated the potential of large fluctuations with small data sets within neighbourhoods.
• Under the leadership of Sue Sterkenburg, City Assessor, the Assessment Department has improved communication with property owners, recognizing that notifying owners of upcoming changes is beneficial to build trust and ensure the correctness of assessment data. Furthermore, increased notification measures have been undertaken in the case of a property’s assessed value increasing more than 20% year over year.

As a result of the work done, property owners have an open invitation to participate in the property assessment process, through ARFIs, phone calls, emails, and appointments with the Assessment Department. The Assessment Department has demonstrated its commitment to improving communication to build trust while focusing on its purpose of utilizing property assessment to distribute property taxes fairly among property owners within the municipality.

In recognition of the work done by the Assessment Department, the Medicine Hat & District Chamber of Commerce has detailed the progress in a letter to City Council, which can be found here: https://growthzonesitesprod.azureedge.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/1308/2023/08/2023-08-17-Letter-to-City-Council-re-Commercial-Tax-Assessment.pdf. The Chamber gives credit and appreciation to the active, progressive, and collaborative work done in the last decade, demonstrating the successful advancement and completion of recommendations we had put forward. We wish to acknowledge the Assessment Department for their ongoing commitment to communication and dialogue with us over the years, and we look forward to continuing our productive relationship.