Council approves tax incentives, Sparks questions write-offs and uncollectibles

Posted on April 1, 2026 by Taber Times

By Cal Braid
Taber Times
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

 At a March 9 town council meeting, the administration asked council to approve the residential and investment incentive recipients of the 2026 tax incentive that is offered to new homes, commercial properties and industrial properties. Both the Investment Incentive Bylaw and Residential Tax Incentive Bylaw require the approval of council at the first monthly meeting in March.

 The process allows administration time to sort through the applications from the year before, as well as time after approval for finance to organize and apply the incentive starting during the current year, the agenda said.

 The residential investment incentive is a four-year tiered exemption and the commercial and industrial incentive is a five-year tiered exemption, both of which are applied at gradually increasing rates.

 Economic Development Director Amy Allred presented the agenda item to council, and Coun. Sorensen was the first to comment once Allred was finished.

 “Thank you Amy for the presentation, and I think that’s applause and hats off to council for the foresight of working with administration to create this program to help residential and commercial businesses,” Sorensen said. She offered to make the first of two required motions for each category of incentives. Council passed the first motion 6-1, with Coun. Sparks being the lone opposition – without stating any reason for objecting.

 Coun. Firth offered the second motion and it again passed 6-1 with no comment from Sparks.

  Following that, Finance Director Rob Osmond presented the next agenda item about tax write-offs and “uncollectible” monies owed to the Town. In the ensuing conversation, Sparks interjected, “I know there’s tax incentives and things like this, but the money for these write-offs has to come from somewhere, with a total of $167,518.28 in write-offs.”

 “This is a loss. This money comes from somewhere. This money comes from taxation, which is the equivalent of about two per cent on our taxes this year because of these write-offs, because of incentives.”

  He went back to the previous agenda item. “We just voted on these incentives, but I just wanted to make a point here of what this actually is – this isn’t free money. This money comes from somewhere, and this comes from taxation to the equivalent of at least two per cent because of these items. Thank you.”

 Sorensen took the opportunity to explain the incentives in greater detail to council, which has three new members this term. “Just background to all of council: there was a housing shortage, which everyone was feeling provincially and all through Canada. (This was) the past council’s incentive to spark residential building and how we can increase commercial building also.”

 “So this is a payoff in bringing business and investment to the community. And again, it’s not over the full life term of the build. It’s a five-year rollback incentive. And you know, it’s worked for our community, as you can see. So I think it’s a good thing.”

 Mayor Prokop and Coun. Remfert – both who served on the previous council – offered their unwavering support of the tax incentives. Remfert said, “I look at it as a benefit…the amount of money that the Town has budgeted for a year, and divided by the amount of people we have, if more housing comes in, if more business comes in, the taxes get shared less.”

  “It is a positive to the whole. I understand there is a number that looks negative at the start, but years down the line, as this money starts coming into our budget, I would say it’s a positive, he said. “I know it looks like a negative, but I think it’s a very big positive”.

 Prokop defended it by saying of the model, “We didn’t reinvent the wheel. We saw it working elsewhere, and investigated it. And that’s kind of where that came to be.”

 Rob Osmond also explained succinctly, “The tax incentive programs, the way that ours is modeled – the rate, the portion that we’re writing off for tax incentives – is before that revenue is first recognized in our tax revenues.”

He called it a “delayed” revenue – a number that doesn’t have to be budgeted as coming out of revenues, because it hasn’t actually been budgeted yet.

 Sparks accepted the explanations without comment, though his point about write-offs and uncollectibles remained valid, if unacknowledged. Either way, it showed that new voices on council bring new perspectives and can challenge previously accepted norms.

 The agenda showed the statistics of all qualified and approved properties that took occupancy in 2025 and met the qualifications for the program to start this year (2026).

 The list read: 2026 start (2025 occupancy), Commercial Renos – two; Commercial/Industrial New – seven; Residential Multi-Family – 13; Residential Single Family – 27; Residential Manufactured – five.

 Those numbers were a significant jump up from last year, when they were listed as: 2025 start (2024 occupancy), Commercial Renos – two; Commercial/Industrial New – zero; Residential Multi-Family – eight; Residential Single Family – four; Residential Manufactured – six.