Property tax win for N.B. Power to cost Belledune and Saint John more than $1M

The Village of Belledune and City of Saint John are each facing the loss of more than $500,000 in their municipal budgets next year following downward revisions in the taxable value of major N.B. Power generating plants in their communities.

It's the fourth large reduction in a major industrial property's assessed value in Saint John in the last 15 years, and Saint John Mayor Donna Reardon said they are not easy to absorb..

"When we get these things happening it's very, very difficult to manage," Reardon said.

"We're trying to grow, and when you get this kind of news that sets you back even further."

In 2013, Service New Brunswick simultaneously cut the taxable assessment of J.D. Irving Ltd.'s east Saint John paper mill by $28.9 million and west side pulp and paper mill by $26.1 million.

Four years later, the agency  lowered the assessed value on the then-Irving Oil/Repsol Energy LNG facility by $202 million.

Earlier this week, assessors with Service New Brunswck dropped the taxable value of the coal-burning generating station in Belledune by $28.1 million and the oil-burning station at Coleson Cove in Saint John by $22.5 million.  

The assessed value of the Mactaquac Dam was also cut by $5 million.

The combined revisions will save N.B. Power nearly $2 million in property taxes in the coming year, including $588,000 in property tax that would have been paid to the Village of Belledune had the assessment not dropped, $587,000 payable to Saint John and something less than $100,000 to the community of Central York.

The remaining $800,000 the utility will save is property tax that would have been paid on the three generating stations to the New Brunswick government.

According to Service New Brunswick, the utility asked for a review of the assessed value of the three generating station properties earlier in the year, and this resulted in the major revisions. 

"SNB followed its usual process to inspect, review and analyze market information related to the properties in question," department spokesperson Kelly Cormier wrote in an email.

Reardon and Belledune Mayor Paul Arseneault both say they had no idea that major revisions in the taxable value of the generating stations were being studied by Service New Brunswick.

Nor did the municipalities receive notice or an explanation of the changes when they suddenly appeared on Service New Brunswick's assessment website earlier this week.