ESTERHAZY — Esterhazy town council passed the 2025 budget on June 12, with both the base tax and mill rate seeing an increase this year.
“The base tax used to be $900 for agricultural and residential, and they’ve increased it to $950, so it went up by $50,” CAO Tammy MacDonald said. “On the commercial portion, the base tax used to be $1,100 and they increased it by $50, so it’s now $1,150.”
The mill rate in Esterhazy will also increase from 7.5 to 8.5 in this budget.
“We did raise the mill rate, and we did add the $50 on the base tax, but it’s still very low,” MacDonald said.
Mayor Randy Bot said steady incremental rises in taxes help the town in the long term. He also pointed out that, with 2025 being a revaluation year, the town’s taxable assessment is down.
“With the assessments going down and the education tax going down, and the need for infrastructure upgrades, we’re able to do a little bit of an increase this year without people noticing it on their tax bill, but still put more money into the pocket of the community,” he said. “Some places you get a tax raise all of a sudden in the assessment year, everything goes up, and then you’re looking at huge increases. This year, if there is an increase, it will be absolutely minimal.
“We’re hoping to keep taxes as close to the same as we possibly can, but still, the money now is going into the municipality, which is going to be positive for us,” he continued. “With the water treatment plant, with — someday soon — a hospital coming into our community, and just roads and everyday infrastructure repairs, things aren’t cheap nowadays. In order to get a little bit more money in the bank, it’s going to help the community as a whole.”
Boombata Homes meets with council
During last week’s regular meeting of Esterhazy town council, Doug Foster of Boombata Homes appeared as a delegation. The town and the developer have a service agreement in place for Hummingbird Crescent, and Foster was seeking a change in how properties are taxed.
“They’ve been a huge part in our community, and are growing our community over the past 15 years now, if not longer, and they’ve just kind of slowed down building,” Mayor Bot explained. “But when they did all their engineering reports, they broke down the lots on Hummingbird Crescent into separate lots, so what they’re asking for is that they want to consolidate all those lots for now so they’re not paying a base tax on every single empty lot that’s sitting there with no future development set right now.”
Foster raised some concerns about Boombata Homes’ relationship with the town over the years, noting that the servicing agreement in place appears to contain several barriers to the developer.
“We want to work with the town, we want support in terms of thinking ‘let’s get these lots out the door,’ because if we get people in town to build, that elevates your tax base,” he said. “When we initiated 10 years ago, it felt a lot more like a partnership with the town. Other towns, like Moosomin and so on, are pretty aggressively going after developers to come in and build.”
Mayor Bot noted the town is open to working with Boombata Homes, assuring Foster that council will proceed on the matter.
“I think we got the gist of what you’re saying,” Mayor Bot told Foster. “We thank you for coming out and having this conversation with us. We’re going to discuss this as a whole, and maybe we can set up a meeting with you to come down and have a conversation, I’m just going to get this council a little bit more up to date with everything, and we’re going to take a look at everything as a whole.
“I understand where they’re coming from, it’s tough to pay that $950 on every lot—especially when you have no future plans of developing right now,” Mayor Bot told the World-Spectator.
