Greater Sudbury's tax policies are making it difficult for city council to achieve its goal of attracting more commercial and industrial develop, councillors were told Tuesday.
Those policies means Sudbury has one of the highest industrial tax rates in the province, members of the finance and administration committee heard at a meeting at Tom Davies Square.
The committee met to approve the tax ratio policy for 2016, which dictates how the tax burden is shared in Sudbury among residential, commercial and industrial taxpayers.
Ward 5 Coun. Bob Kirwan asked what council can do to attract more businesses.
"Is there a way for us to reduce our industrial tax rate so that it's more attractive to industry, without imposing a significant tax increase on our residential properties?" Kirwan asked.
"It doesn't sound to me like we have a method where we can become more competitive with our industrial tax rate, with the way our system is structured."
Ed Stankiewicz, the city's acting treasurer, said that for years, councils have kept residential rates low as possible as a matter of policy.
"Every year, council has tried to pass as much tax burden away from the residential class, with revenue neutral tax ratios,” Stankiewicz said. “That inevitably ratcheted up the commercial and industrial tax ratios."
The city's industrial tax rate last year was 3.7 per cent, he said, compared to the average in Ontario of 2.3 per cent. Commercial rates are 2.5 per cent here, while they average 1.8 per cent in the rest of the province.
"So as we look for way to attract more commercial and industrial (development), we have some serious difficulty," Kirwan said.
"I don't think we can reduce our commercial and industrial rate without increasing the residential rates. And nobody around this table wants to see more residential tax increases.
"So we may be in an impossible situation (if we want) to have an attractive commercial or industrial tax rate, because we certainly don't want to burden our residential with a higher tax rate ... We may have to find more creative ways of attracting commercial and industrial development in our area."
"You're absolutely 100-per-cent correct,” Stankiewicz said. “It will be difficult to do that."