Tobiano resort near Kamloops should give up land or tax owners itself: TNRD
Residents of the Tobiano resort community west of Kamloops may not have to pay infrastructure taxes to the Thompson Nicola Regional District anymore.
The regional district has been collecting taxes from homeowners in the resort community for more than a decade, but it's now looking to cut ties and let the Tobiano resort developer look after fee collection on its own.
Regional district staff gave the private owners of the community two options: give up ownership of parks, trails, signs, boulevards and streetlights or cut the regional district out from collecting fees.
The resort owners, predictably, chose the latter.
Tobiano is a resort community centred around a golf course to the west of Kamloops, which also includes the private Bruker Marina on Kamloops Lake. It sits on 1,000 acres of land and mostly consists of large single-family homes. It's currently owned and managed by the Abbotsford-based development company Diverse Properties Ltd.
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A staff report going to next week's regional district board meeting explains how the regional district agreed to collect taxes on behalf of the resort in 2007, only to forward those funds back to the Tobiano Resort Association in a lump sum. The resort would then privately pay for utility and infrastructure services.
The regional district began collecting those taxes in 2011.
"(T)he intent of these services was to be a mechanism for taxation to fund the operational costs until such a time that there were enough homes for the (resort) to be self-sufficient to fund these services directly," the staff report reads. "It is not clear why this transition did not take place at an earlier time."
The staff report continues to label the property tax arrangement as "unusual," since the regional district has control over all other park land and services within its boundaries.
The resort is expected to need about $160,000 to fund its infrastructure services each year until 2027, but the regional district funds haven't been enough to maintain the resort's costs.
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The report says the resort's developer has been paying out of pocket to make up the difference.
It's unclear how long the developer has needed to make up for a funding shortfall, or how much money is needed, but the report does say the resort has tried and failed to have the regional district increase the taxes it collects from Tobiano homeowners.
As long as the regional district is taxing homeowners, the resort will continue to report its finances back to the regional district.
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Regional district staff, however, is recommending the board stop taxing Tobiano homeowners so the resort can handle its expenses on its own by 2023.
It's not clear how this change could affect costs for Tobiano homeowners, but it's likely those residents will see their fees go up, since the resort has already been asking for a tax hike from the regional government.
The report will go to a regional district board meeting on Oct. 6.
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