Coquitlam about to reverse tax policy

By LAUREEN McMAHON

A Coquitlam city councilor and All Saints parishioner is pleased that city council appears ready to reverse a policy that would allow new churches to be taxed on portions of their property.
Richard Stewart, a former B.C. Liberal MLA elected to Coquitlam Council in 2005, went to bat for a neighboring church in an effort to see that it received fair tax treatment. He presented a motion Sept. 11 asking council to reverse a two-year-old policy which placed a moratorium on new church applications for a “permissive property tax exemption.”

City council voted in committee last week to accept Stewart’s motion. In an interview with The B.C. Catholic, Stewart said that if council were to reverse the policy at its next meeting, Sept. 18, “all new churches, mosques, temples, and other ‘worship’ buildings, including their parking lots, will be treated equitably, and will be exempted from municipal tax as intended by the Community Charter.”

In the summer of 2007 the Archdiocese of Vancouver will play host to about 60 young people from across Canada coming for a summer mission project called Impact 2007. Organized by Catholic Christian Outreach, the Vancouver edition of Impact, the fourth installment of the summer project, will involve church outreaches, events geared toward youth, evangelization training, and faith studies.

Richard Stewart

Section 220 of the Community Charter exempts from municipal property taxes “a building set apart for public worship, and the land on which the building stands.” This exemption has existed in B.C. since 1881 through various pieces of legislation. However, City Councils are permitted to decide how much of the land surrounding a church, such as the parking lot and landscaped areas, will be exempt. Under Coquitlam’s 2004 policy, the exemption for new churches was limited to the land directly under the building footprint.

The unfairness of the 2004 Council moratorium, said Stewart, drew attention when a local Kingdom Hall Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation was forced to look for a different location after their parking lot was expropriated to widen a street. Although the church members had applied for re-zoning of their property in order to stay on Dewdney Trunk Road, when this was denied, so the search for a new site commenced.

Stewart explained, “They found a site that was designated by the city for a church, and constructed their new Kingdom Hall in 2004. However, when they applied for the same tax exemption they had enjoyed at their previous location, an exemption which applies to all 25 other churches in Coquitlam, they were told of council’s new policy, and that they were no longer eligible even though they had operated their original church for 35 years.

Further unfairness ensued, said Stewart, when the Greater Vancouver Regional District also applied its new parking tax to the new location. (Church parking lots are exempt from paying the parking tax as long as the local government has granted a permissive tax exemption to the property.)
“The Kingdom Hall members went to court,” said Stewart, “and last month Madam Justice Ross of the B.C. Supreme Court ruled that Coquitlam Council, while not acting in a discriminatory manner, had not properly heard the basis on which the church was arguing for the tax exemption.”

The judge, Stewart said, ordered the Council to re-hear their request and to review documentation on the land expropriation.

Stewart said he is very hopeful that Council will ratify his motion to end the moratorium. However he suggested that readers of The B.C. Catholic can help by contacting council members to express their support for the longstanding policy across Canada of exempting churches from property taxes.
Coquitlam Council names and e-mail addresses are available at www.coquitlam.ca by clicking on mayor and council.