The Fort Frances council unanimously approved a tax rebate for the Volunteer Bureau valued at $1,301.90.
John Sus, treasurer and director of the Volunteer Bureau, submitted the tax rebate request to council for consideration request on Dec. 2, 2020. The request was submitted under the Tax Rebate Program. This program is available in order to provide tax reliefs for charities eligible with a registration number issued by the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.
The decision to approve the tax rebate was not clear cut because of the type of property the Volunteer Bureau operates from. According to the bylaw established for the Tax Rebate Program, the property on which the charitable organization runs has to be registered as either commercial or industrial.
However, the Fort Frances Volunteer Bureau is registered as residential property.
Given the last tax rebate request from the Volunteer Bureau was submitted in 2009, Fort Frances Mayor June Caul said they have to look at how these requests were handled in the past.
“We do ask questions that sometimes people don’t like us to ask,” Caul said. “Sometimes we get accused of things we didn’t really do and we do the best we can do at the time with a request. We have to ask questions to make sure that we understand things fully. Once we feel we do that we can go ahead and vote on things.”
Therefore, the Administration and Finance executive committee wanted input from council on this decision.
According to the assessment of the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC), residential property consists of the following: land owned and occupied by a non-profit service organization, a non-profit private club, a non-profit cultural organization, or a non-profit recreational sports club, other than land used as a golf course or ski resort.
In an email to Doug Brown, chief administrative officer for the town, Mark Cawston, property valuation analyst at MPAC, said “cultural organization” means an organization that is established and maintained for cultural activities for Canadians of a specific ethnic origin, including First Nations peoples, while a “service organization” means an organization whose primary function is to provide services to promote the welfare of the community and not only to benefit its members.
In an email to Dawn Galusha, Sus said the Fort Frances Volunteer Bureau is a registered non-profit charity.
“[It is] involved in the recruitment, training, and/or organization of volunteers, volunteer groups, service clubs, and social programs dedicated to providing services and goods to the less fortunate people of our community, not only financially but mentally and socially as well,” the email said.
According to a subsection of the Tax Rebate Program bylaw, council of the Town of Fort Frances may by resolution designate a property class other than the commercial property classes and the industrial property classes to be included within the definition of “eligible property” for the purposes of the bylaw.
Therefore, it was up to the discretion of council to provide a resolution designating this residential property as eligible property for the purpose of the charitable rebate application for the 2020 taxation year.
