By Matthew Liebenberg
Southwest Booster
The City of Swift Current is moving ahead with enforcement actions against property owners with tax arrears that will result in the transfer of property title to the municipality.
Council members approved three motions during a regular City council meeting on Sept. 14 to allow the chief financial officer to proceed with tax enforcement measures.
“This is a last-ditch resort here,” Mayor Al Bridal said. “Many of these people have not paid taxes for up to eight, nine years sometimes and all the rest of the citizens are paying their taxes.”
He noted that the payment of taxes provides residents with a variety of City services, including streets, police and fire.
“We don’t like doing this, but it’s one of those things that if you live in a community, whether it’s a city or a village, you need to pay your taxes in order for there to be services,” he said. “There are several businesses on this as well as homes and I feel bad about it, but I’m pretty sure I pay my taxes and I’m pretty sure everybody around this table and likely everybody in this room paid their taxes and these people have not.”
He emphasized that the City tried to make arrangements with these property owners to pay their tax arrears, but without success.
“We’ve given them every opportunity,” he said. “We’ve talked to them. We’ve tried to set up schedules. When you read that schedule report that we have, we can see where people made promises to make payments and then they didn’t or people would pay just a few hundred a year when the taxes were thousands a year. … It’s just plain not an easy process, but it’s something that’s legislated and something we need to do if we’re going to continue running this city.”
The first approved motion authorized the start of proceedings for title by issuing a six-month notice to 23 property owners to inform them that a tax lien has been registered on their property. City Chief Financial Officer Alicia Laird noted that there were originally 54 properties with tax arrears and attempts to collect outstanding amounts resulted in full payment for 31 properties, which still leaves 23 properties with outstanding taxes.
The tax arrears on these 23 properties vary from a low of just over $3,000 to a high of more than $43,000. The total amount owed is $275,740.56.
The second motion directs the chief financial officer to obtain title from the Provincial Mediation Board (PMB) for 13 properties. Tax liens have already been registered on these properties and the six-month notice period has expired without the receipt of payments.
The PMB will contact these 13 property owners after receiving the City’s request for title to arrange for payment of the outstanding amounts. If a property owner does not make the payment, the PMB will approve the City’s request for the transfer of property title.
The tax arrears on the 13 properties vary from a low of over $3,000 to a high of nearly $33,000. The total amount owed is $193,831.83.
The third motion directs the chief financial officer to take title to six properties. The City has followed the procedure under the provincial Tax Enforcement Act and the City bylaw on tax enforcement policy that allows the transfer of these property titles to the municipality.
The City received approval from the PMB to continue with the title transfers and a 30-day final notice will be issued to these six property owners. The tax arrears on these properties vary from a low of over $21,000 to a high of more than $73,000. The total amount owed is $236,435.03.
City Clerk Jackie Schlamp explained what will happen when a property title is transferred to the municipality.
“Taking the title is our last resort,” she said. “If those arrears cannot be paid, they then become a tenant of the City. We work, if need be, with the sheriff’s office to have people removed and work with them to get them into different housing so that we can go through our due process to put that place for sale within the year of taking title. Again, it’s a legislative process which we have to follow to go through all the steps.”
Council approves extension of time for preparation of City reports:
Council members approved a motion and passed a bylaw during the regular City council meeting on Sept. 14 to extend the time for preparing several reports for the provincial government.
The City is legally required to prepare its annual financial statements, auditor’s report, public accounts and municipal waterworks report. These documents must be submitted to the Saskatchewan Ministry of Government Relations by Sept. 1 each year.
City Chief Financial Officer Alicia Laird said the City was unable to meet the Sept. 1, 2026 deadline for the 2025 reporting year.
“The delay is due to integration and stabilization issues related to the City’s new accounting system, along with existing vacancies in the Financial Services division,” she explained. “Preparation of the public accounts is also affected by similar payroll system challenges and vacancies in the People and Culture division.”
The approved bylaw will provide the City with an extension until Nov. 30, 2026, but City administration expects the completion of these documents will already happen during September.
Laird assured council members that the delay in preparing these documents is not a result of any underlying issues within City administration, but only transitional due to some issues with technology and human resources.
“We anticipate this is purely transitional,” she said. “Although ensuring that our statements are prepared accurately and reliably is an ongoing requirement each year and so each year we will ensure that we are taking the proper time to put forward properly accurate financial statements, but absolutely the significant delay in this year’s timeline is due to that transition period.”
