Dauphin city council reviewed property tax collection reports at its regular meeting, Aug. 19, which show 2024 with the largest outstanding balance in the days after the July 31 due date.

Compared to the previous eight years, the $1,786,975.30 of the $10,749,453.24 in 2024 assessed taxes as of Aug. 31, is the highest at 16.62 per cent.

The  next highest percentage was in 2021 when 13.97 per cent remained outstanding at Aug. 3.

The reason for this year’s jump, city manager Sharla Griffiths said, is hard to pin down.

“Maybe the economy. People are just not able to pay,” she said, adding delays with tax bills being mailed out might also have contributed.

“We did have a challenge with the new system, the the new tax bills that came out from the province.”

Those tax bills included the entire school tax rebate rather than half of the rebate as in previous years.

“The province prints those those colourful pink and blue papers and they basically push to our accounting systems how much everybody has to pay, everybody’s outstanding balances,” Griffiths said.

“We usually mail our invoices out at the end of May, beginning of June. It gives a couple of months to pay. This year we mailed them out about one month ahead of time because the province had not given us that push for what people owed.”

While a few percentage points might not seem like lot, when you are working with a budget of several million dollars, it adds up quickly.

With as much as $.5 million or $.6 million in property taxes going unpaid from year to year, the more that can be collected the better, Griffiths said.

“We operate with a line of credit throughout the year, anyway. But we’re always happy when taxes are all paid, because we don’t have to go into that line of credit,” she said.

“However, between now and July 31, 2025, we might have to go into that line of credit earlier.”