Francisco Canjura - Castlegar News Published: July 07, 2009 5:00 PM
Zellstoff Celgar has served a petition to the City of Castlegar for a judicial review of their “unreasonable tax rate” or “illegal” tax bylaw to the BC Supreme Court, according to a City of Castlegar press release. “They’re taking us to court because they figure that the tax is unfair or it’s not reasonable. As far as we’re concerned the taxes are reasonable, but if we need to work with Celgar we’re more than willing to work with Celgar,” Chernoff said. Working with Celgar means the city is willing to work towards maybe adjusting the city’s tax rate to come up with a compromise. “If the rate needs to come down the rate needs to come down, but how do you accomplish that? That’s the hardest part of all. To do it in a short term is not feasible. It’s a long-term project and that’s what we’ll have to discuss,” Chernoff said. “In our five-year financial projection we were going to get their taxes down to 40 per cent. It appears Celgar is not happy with that 40 per cent, so maybe we have to look at this a little closer and come up with a strategy on how we can do this.”Chernoff went on to say the city needs to meet with Celgar in order to discuss the issue at hand as the sides have not spoken since Celgar asked for a 50 per cent tax cut during budget discussions.
“We would like to work things out, but the writ has been filed so eventually we’ll probably have to go to court, but we have no idea when that will be,” he said. On Tuesday, when the News spoke with Chernoff he said no meetings had been scheduled with Celgar. Chernoff said he is not happy with Celgar’s decision to take the city to court on this issue, but he believes it was caused by a lack of communication. “My expectation is that they would not do this, but it’s already done so there is nothing I can do about it. We’ll go from there and I really want to work with Celgar and I hope they maintain their operation here for a long, long time,” Chernoff said. Chernoff said Celgar is a huge asset to the community and the city wants to work with them. Despite council knowing Celgar was not happy with their decision to lower their taxes to 40 per cent over the next five years, Chernoff said their actions to take the city to court came as a surprise to him.
The city has already put in a call to the Minister of Community Development to see if the city can get some assistance from the provincial government. As taxes owed to the city will not be paid until the issue is resolved, either by the courts or out of court, council will meet to come up with a financial strategy to deal with the $2.7 million deficit it now faces. Currently four Vancouver Island communities are in similar court case battles with Catalyst Paper and are scheduled to appear in court in early August, according to Chernoff. “That would really be a precedent setting what happens in the courts,” he said. “I don’t know (if this could be settled out of court) I’d like to say yes and I think it’s feasible to do if we could come to an agreement, but remember it’s a province-wide issue because your going to deal with heavy industry in the whole province of B.C.” Celgar mill manager Al Hitzroth was not available for comment at press time.
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