After 20 years of paying property taxes on a non-existent pool, one RM of Ste Anne resident is asking for a refund.

Ken Levenec with his assessment papers“I guess he just finally noticed,” says Reeve Paul Saindon, “and realizing that this is what is happening, he’s asking us to dig into the past.”

The resident, Ken Levenec, says he only learned of the error after receiving a letter revealing he no longer had to pay tax on the pool.  The correction finally made from information obtained with aerial photography.

The matter is made even more absurd by the realization that the non-existent pool is not even recorded to be on his property. “If there ever was one, it was on the neighbouring property,” shares Saindon, “yet for some mysterious reason it got put onto his tax bill over the last 20 years.”

Saindon says the inaccurate assessment made all those years ago was an “honest mistake and can be rectified”. There are, however, some complications.

“We don’t have records going back to who did what 20 years ago,” informs Saindon. “Assessment has changed personnel, we have changed personnel.”

In addition to those challenges, the reeve says their records only go back a handful of years. “A lot of that stuff has been archived or, for all I know, perhaps even shredded.”

Despite the difficulty in determining the data, council made the decision to try and calculate the correction. “You’re never going to get it down to the last penny because I don’t think we have all those records to really prove all that.”

Still, Saindon says staff at the municipality “should be able to come up with a satisfactory number”.

The law in these matters states that both residents and the RM have the right to request an assessment up to two years back, however, council concluded that this was a unique case.

“This is not just something that was missed,” offers Saindon, “this was something that was blatantly misunderstood and then forgotten, and then over time added up.”

Levenec says he is thankful to the RM for how they handled the situation and suggests that taxpayers pay attention to their taxes.  According to Levenec, the additional taxation for a pool in 2020 is $128.14.