Council grants golf course tax exemption

By Sean Feagan, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Strathmore town council has granted the Strathmore Golf Club exempt from paying municipal property taxes through a bylaw, which could be used to exempt other non-profits.

During its regular council meeting on Dec. 2, council passed first and second reading of a proposed bylaw that would make the Strathmore Golf Club, a non-profit organization, exempt from municipal property taxes, including municipal, education and Wheatland Housing requisitions. 

Once adopted, the bylaw could also be used to give other non-profit organizations in town tax exempt status, explained Mel Tiede, the town’s director of corporate services. This would be done by adding an organization to Schedule A of the bylaw through an accepted motion from council.

The bylaw, titled the Non-Profit Organization Tax Exemption Bylaw, could have been passed that night if its third reading received unanimous consent from council. However, Councillor Lorraine Bauer voted in opposition, which required third reading to be considered during a subsequent council meeting.

Council then voted to reconsider the third reading of the bylaw during a special meeting of council on Dec. 3. During this meeting, Bauer explained her reasoning for voting in opposition.

“I don’t want to give people the impression that because I’m voting against this, that I don’t believe that the golf course has a very special place in Strathmore,” she said. “What I don’t want to happen is to open up the floodgates and to have all of our nonprofit businesses in Strathmore leaning on us to bail them out of tough situations.”

However, the bylaw then passed 6-1, with Bauer again voting in opposition.

The bylaw formalizes the tax-exempt status of the golf club, but such an arrangement is nothing new. Between 2001 and 2004, town council passed motions exempting the club from property taxes and continued this practice through precedent from 2005 to 2019, as discussed during the town council meeting on Sept. 16.