Vauxhall council looks at changes to rates bylaw

By Cole Parkinson
Vauxhall Advance
cparkinson@tabertimes.com

A few changes have been made to the Town of Vauxhall’s rates bylaw based on a variety of suggestions.

At the council’s regular meeting on May 1, councillors were given an update on what had been changed within their bylaw.

One of the changes comes from one of council’s previous decisions involving cemetery rates.
“Council had made a previous resolution on increasing winter and summer rates, they are now changed on the new bylaw,” said Mindy Dunphy, office manager for the Town of Vauxhall.

Summer rates for casket and cremation are set at $400 and $200 respectively while winter rates are at $550 for casket and $275 for cremation.

Some arena rates also saw some minor changes.

The only additions to the rates come in the way of fees for renting the ice as a group or for tournaments.

“We removed the youth group Friday to Saturday so it would just be $85 straight time and we removed youth and adult tournaments. They were removed because we just left it at $100 for the adult group and $85 for the youth group,” said Dunphy.

With the opening of the new Vauxhall pool last summer, there were a few suggestions made around fees.

Financials around lessons see a slight increase from the prior year, though the change isn’t a large jump up.

“All of the lessons went up $5, also the private lessons went up $5,” continued Dunphy.

Lessons for pre-school aged kids is at $40, Swim Kids Levels 1-5 is $40, Swim Kids Levels 6-10 is at $50, Bronze Medallion and Bronze Cross is $115 and private lessons are $25 per half hour.

One in particular fee staff was in favour of removing completely was the ability for an individual to rent out the entire facility.

“We removed the pool rental. There used to be a $100 pool rental and we took that right off,” added Dunphy.

Council was curious as to why the ability to rent the pool was taken right out, which staff had a valid reason for eliminating.

“There was a lot of issues last summer. Usually people want to rent it out on the hottest day and people show up and couldn’t get in. It was an inconvenience,” said Cris Burns, CAO for the Town of Vauxhall.

The last change to the rates bylaw comes in the way of notifications for tax arrears.

“On the new bylaw it says the tax arrears notifications is $50, we just changed that to reflect how much it actually costs us,” said Dunphy. “We had quite a bit less on the old fee than what it actually cost the town to do that. I think it was like $5 a parcel or something like that, so we reflected the current cost.”

First, second and third and final reading were all passed unanimously.

Mayor Margaret Plumtree and Coun. Jake Wiebe were both absent from the meeting.

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