ATHABASCA — A recent decision on a four-year-old appeal from a landowner to the Athabasca County Local Assessment Review Board (LARB) bounced in favour of the municipality after two prior board decisions were quashed upon judicial review.
County assessor Dan Kanuka’s 2020 choice to value lots on Bison Ridge, phase one of an acreage development south of town, as residential property rather than agricultural land was upheld by a June 3 ruling by the board in Devon. The finding saw the property value jump by nearly 200 times the valuation as farmland.
The board's decision was reviewed by county councillors during their June 11 regular meeting, and Coun. Rob Minns commended a 2023 motion to include property appeal decisions in council agenda packages.
“That’s information that a lot of people would have never seen, and I think this is a great celebration when I see the decision go to Athabasca County,” said Minns.
The appeal process began in 2020, after 20 undeveloped subdivision lots between one and 1.6 acres owned by Helmut Roeben were valued at more than $1.5 million by the county’s assessor in 2020, based on market value. Valuation for individual lots ranged from $69,000 to over $85,000.
Roeben’s position was the unsold lots, although subdivided in 2013, were used for horse grazing and firewood extraction, and should therefore be assessed at agricultural use value as they had been from 2013 to 2019.
Athabasca County’s argument was that assessing unsold lots at the lower agricultural land rate set by the province would create inequity between owners of Bison Ridge lots already sold and other subdivision property owners around the county.
On Sept. 28, 2020, a decision was made by the LARB members reviewing the appeal that the land should be assessed as farmland, and Athabasca County did not provide enough evidence to justify its classification of the land as residential, despite a restrictive covenant — a type of legal clause — prohibiting livestock grazing placed on the lots by Roeben.
Under the 2020 decision, the lot valuation under agricultural use dropped to between $350 and $580 per lot, valuations that would see the property value assessed at over $1.5 million in 2020 drop to $7,660.
Less than a year later, in April of 2021, the Court of Queen’s Bench quashed the board’s decision by consent and ordered a new hearing of the appeal. After a second LARB hearing in July 2021, the board reinforced their previous decision and again deemed the lands to be valued at agricultural use standards.
Two years after the board upheld its previous findings, Justice Donald Lee of the Court of King’s Bench granted the county’s application for a new hearing on April 25, 2023.
Lee noted the board failed to specifically and meaningfully address one section of Matters Relating to Assessment and Taxation Regulation (MRAT) legislation that deals with land intended for residential use, but not yet populated.
Section 7(3)(b) of the MRAT notes that parcels between one and three acres “used but not necessarily occupied for residential purposes,” or that can be serviced by adjacent water and sewer lines, be assessed at market value.
On June 3, 2024, after a third review of both parties’ arguments, the board handed down a decision that departed from the previous two findings.
“Effectively, everything that is practically necessary for these parcels to be sold and developed for residential occupation has been completed,” read the board’s decision and reasonings report. “The complainants own actions demonstrate to the board that the properties are structured for residential use.”
The report listed the no grazing restrictive covenant, adjacent water lines, submission of a subdivision plan in 2013, construction of road access, and marketing of parcels online and with a real estate agent as acreage lots as evidence that met the conditions outlined in section 7(3)(b) of the MRAT.
Roeben’s submission that the no grazing restriction was intended to come into effect after the sale of lots was deemed “legally incorrect,” as no clause in the covenant noted a delayed start date.
Despite the lack of adjacent sewer lines, the lots were found to still meet residential criteria, as the parcels are intended to be self-serviced with their own septic systems and would not need external sewer hook-up.
“Assessment is about equitably spreading the tax burden across properties,” said Reeve Brian Hall in a June 21 interview. “Residential property is residential property, and they need to be treated comparably.”
Roeben declined a request for comment on the board’s June 4 decision.
