Council is seeking additional information after the Condo Corporation (the “Corporation”) for the Hillview Condominium requested tax relief of $286,845.64 for 96 units.
Hillview Condominiums were destroyed in the 2016 Horse River wildfire and suffered multiple setbacks in the nearly four and a half years it took to rebuild.
Now fully rebuilt, some of the units have carried significant tax arrears.
According to the Corporation, the solution was to transfer mortgages of abandoned homes via a foreclosure process to the corporation effectively granting ownership of these homes to rent out.
Due to market conditions and high expenses, it didn’t work.
Corporation delegate for Tuesday’s council meeting Charles Scott says that they cannot take ownership of the condos as a corporation until the taxes are paid off.
“As soon as we foreclose, the corporation is going to have to pay the city without this relief and we don’t have extra cash,” said Scott. “We don’t have 280 ($280,000), so I’ve got to go to the homeowners and say ‘pay up’ so we can foreclose. Paying $2,500 is better than letting us fall short in arrears, that they’re going to have to pay in the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.”
During an interview with Mix News, Mayor Sandy Bowman explained that council will be waiting for administration and legal to come back with more information.
“The people that are in the condo, those people have been paying their taxes. They’ve went through a lot,” Bowman said. “We want to protect them as much as we can. We’re going to try and work with administration, legal, and the condo association to see what we can do for them.”
The motion has been referred to administration to come back to council in September.
