A LaSalle councillor will seek support around the council table Tuesday night for the town to push for updated property assessments, which have been frozen at 2016 levels.
MPAC assessments are supposed to be updated every four years to help calculate property taxes but the province decided not to reassess in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Councillor Jeff Renaud will present a motion asking the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) to make modern, fair-market MPAC assessments a priority this year and to lobby the province to restart phased-in assessments before the 2027 budget cycle.
Because costs for municipalities have risen sharply, Renaud said the lack of updated assessments has forced towns to raise tax rates instead of benefiting from natural assessment growth.
"We have new homes that are being built that are obviously worth more, and you have older homes, and nobody knows where their home sits in fairness," he said.
He said the freeze has created economic challenges for the town.
"The thing that doesn't change now is the value of the homes so we don't have any opportunity to make enough money to cover our expenses. So the only thing we're forced to do is to raise the tax rate," Renaud said.
At the end of November, council approved the 2026 budget with a tax increase of 3.47 per cent. That translated to an average $110 increase in municipal taxes for an average $270,000 home, with a market value of $710,000.
Renaud said the increase was directly tied to the lack of updated MPAC assessments.
"Our user fees have all went up across the board in order to get that number down to something that people felt was more appropriate," he said.
"Had there been natural inflation in the home values, we wouldn't have had to cut as much out in order to keep our number attractive."
LaSalle council meets Tuesday at 6 p.m.