Property owner Kristy Van Slyck is frustrated that city council has done very little to address assessment problems, so she is demanding that the city reduce its reliance on two related service providers.
Specifically, she wants city hall not to renew its agreement with Western Municipal Consulting (WMC), which is providing board of revision (BOR) services, and not renew the contract with the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency (SAMA), which assesses properties.
SAMA’s contract expires on Dec. 31, 2025, while WMC’s contract expires this year; council is not obligated to renew that agreement.
About 20 residents and business owners attended council’s Sept. 25 regular meeting to hear Van Slyck speak about her recent experience with the assessment system and subsequent appeal.
“I know I’ve been up here before and … asked you guys what your opinion is on whether we should keep (SAMA) as our service provider. I haven’t received answers from you,” said the vice-president of acquisitions and leasing with Viridian Property Corporation.
Van Slyck explained that she sent a letter to the minister of Government Relations and was told to use the appeal system. She followed that advice this year but discovered it “is not an effective mode” for achieving assessment equity.
She then recalled the steps she took and the frustrations that followed.
WMC sent Van Slyck an email on June 1 saying it received and accepted her appeal application, while she had 15 days to make adjustments in co-operation with SAMA. If that were unsuccessful, the board of revision would schedule a hearing.
On Aug. 15, she received SAMA’s BOR submission, which said that since she failed to submit her submission on time, the board should dismiss her appeal.
Van Slyck emailed the board and said she was unaware that a hearing had even been scheduled, prompting WMC to send her a picture with a Zoom meeting invitation link. It also said she must have received it since the email did not bounce back.
“I asked a couple more times if we can postpone this because no one would receive a fair hearing … ,” she said, adding she later told the board to cancel the meeting so her appeal could go to the Saskatchewan Municipal Board.
SAMA also agreed that the meeting should be postponed, but only because Van Slyck had allegedly provided too much information in her submission and didn’t have time to review it.
WMC said the hearing would proceed and would take SAMA’s concerns — but not Van Slyck’s — into consideration. The board also allegedly told her to appeal its decision if she didn’t like the process.
The process instructs applicants how to provide a notice of hearing, including via in-person, registered mail or regular mail, she said, indicating her appeal notice contained all her personal contact information. However, WMC deflected her concerns by pointing to another process that could be used.
“I’m not sure which (process) overrides which. However, the professionalism of that behaviour (disgusted me because) … I am one of several individuals who had the exact same experience,” Van Slyck said.
Provincial legislation says boards of revision must be fair to applicants, but she doesn’t believe she received that treatment. Instead, she pointed to a provincial BOR that municipalities can access if they lack their own. This centralized board has fully trained people who know the system and how it functions.
Van Slyck recalled that council eliminated the in-house BOR and hired WMC in May 2022, which confused her since using the latter organization is more expensive. Using 2021 data, the in-house board cost taxpayers $60,265, while using WMC would have cost $124,800.
“If we’re doing this to get professionalism, I don’t think they meant that. If we’re doing this to save money, we definitely didn’t meet that,” she said.
She added that council should not renew the contracts with SAMA and WMC, which would allow the city to regain control over property assessments and provide more accurate appraisals.
Council later asked city administration if it could provide a cost comparison between in-house assessors and SAMA. In response, finance director Brian Acker said city hall was working on such a report and would provide it in November.
The next regular council meeting is Tuesday, Oct. 10.
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