Summerside revisits idea of vacant property tax

SUMMERSIDE — Summerside city council is taking a second look at a tax on vacant properties.

Coun. Cory Snow brought up the topic at the June 2 committee meetings and said it is long past time Summerside added “more teeth” to its bylaws concerning vacant and decaying properties.

“I’ve had some discussions with people in the past who said we really need to consider how we tax our properties if we want to address some of the (city’s) dangerous and unsightly properties — especially ones that sit empty and go undeveloped for long periods of time,” said Snow.

It is not the first time Summerside has considered this issue.

In 2017, then-councillor Brent Gallant asked city staff to research options for a vacant property tax and report back.

Staff did a lot of work on the file, but nothing ever came of it. There was an election a few months later and half the council members changed, including Gallant’s ward, and the new council established its own priorities.

Originally, Gallant was responding to years of complaints by residents about two prominent and long-vacant buildings, the former Holland College vocational school and the old Summerset Manor; both off Granville Street.

Since then, the vocational school has partly been slated for renovation into apartments, while the old manor building has been demolished and a public housing project will be constructed there.

But there are still vacant and decaying properties in the city, said Snow, and imposing higher taxes on them could force owners to either deal with the issue themselves or sell to someone who will.

City staff will now look back at that research and brief council on some options, including how this kind of tax is handled in other municipalities.

“I’d be interested in taking a look at that work and we can take it from there, instead of reinventing the wheel,” said Coun. Bruce MacDougall.

Vacant property taxes are becoming increasingly popular among Canada’s governments and municipalities.

The federal government proposed in this year’s budget a one per cent tax on vacant properties owned by offshore investors, in an attempt to fight speculative property investors and money launderers, and open underused homes to Canadians.

Other governments are using them to deal with the same problem Summerside faces. The City of Ottawa’s finance committee announced on June 1 that it is developing a vacant property tax, but initially only on residential buildings. By raising the rate on vacant homes by just one per cent, that city estimates that it could raise an additional $6.6 million in the first year of the program alone.