Moncton City Council decreases residential taxes for 2023

In the midst of inflation, Moncton City Council has voted to give homeowners a break when it comes to residential taxes next year.

“We were able to lower the tax rate by 10.3 cents,” explained Dawn Arnold, the mayor of Moncton, N.B. “We know that we’ve had incredible growth in our community right now and assessments have really risen, so it was very important to us that our residential tax payers did not receive a huge, huge tax bill.”

Overall, officials say that the growth throughout the city and the property assessment increases were a factor to decreasing the residential tax bracket.

“A property that would have seen a 10 per cent increase in assessment and is protected by the protection mechanism by the province where, for tax purposes, your property cannot be assessed more than 10 per cent if you have not sold, their actual increase is going to be around that two per cent per-year in comparison to 2022,” said Jacques Doucet, the city’s general manager finance services.

“So, when you look at a two per cent increase overall in comparison to 2022, if you compare that to the increases in groceries, the increases in energy, the increases in fuel, this is very, very small.”

Council unanimously approved the operational, utility and capital budgets, claiming it to be a very positive budget overall.

“This is a very positive, an extremely positive budget,” said Doucet. “One, the city was able to mitigate the significant tax rate increases that would have been generated by the assessment increases, so that’s really positive for all the residents and tax payers of the city. But at the same time, the city was able to leverage all the growth in the city and address some key strategic areas of the city.”

“We were able to, over the last three days, really have important conversations on how we can enhance the quality of life for all of our citizens,” adds Arnold.