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The town of Fort Frances will return more than $1.1 million in taxes collected from Resolute Forest Products.
It’s part of a settlement reached in late October on a tax assessment appeal on mill properties dating back to 2017.
Chief Administrative Officer Doug Brown says the final assessment numbers are better than expected.
“When we brought back a report in January of last year and talking with MPAC (Municipal Property Assessment Corporation) at ROMA (Rural Ontario Municipalities Association), they thought a settlement would be good. The numbers are higher than what they thought we would get,” says Brown.
A similar settlement in 2013 saw the town return more than $1.7 million in paid taxes.
Part of the payout in this recent settlement will go to Riversedge Development, the new owners of the mill site.
Brown says they’re still trying to determine future assessment changes with the demolition underway.
“They told us they wrote off a lot of buildings, but we don’t know which got written up. We want to know that. It’s very key from an administration point of view and council too, because at the end of the day we have to balance a budget,” says Brown.
The settlement includes another $108-thousand in education taxes going back to Resolute and Riveredge.
