Park Standoff: Tax dispute has a Saskatchewan regional park at odds with its residents

A property tax increase worth thousands of dollars a year has a cottage association in southern Saskatchewan in a standoff with its park board.

For the 2025 tax year, the Palliser Regional Park went from a 0.1 mill rate within the park to a 4.5 mill rate. For the average home worth $350,000 in the Diefenbaker Lake Cottage Development, the increase adds up to another $1,500 a year.

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For Kathy MacDonald, between the mill rate increase and an increase in the assessed value of her home in the park, her property taxes went from $45.54 a year to $2,761.20 a year, a 6,000 per cent increase.

While the increase applies to the whole park, Kathy said it’s especially frustrating for cottage owners because they don’t get any services provided by the park – they organize and pay for their own water services, garbage and recycling pickup and road clearing.

“It’s not a huge amount of money, but the problem is that money is for nothing,” said Quentin Wiebe, who lives in the development.

He said a tax the development levies itself pays for their services, and those are going up about $50 a year, and thanks to the new assessments, the school taxes they pay to the RM are going up as well.

“And then you throw on there an extra $1,500 that’s just out of the blue for nothing, it adds up,” Wiebe explained.

The cottages in the development also pay about $1,000 a year in lease fees for their plots.

MacDonald said there was no consultation or warning about the mill rate going up in 2025.

“The first I found, officially, was when I got my mailed tax notice from the RM of Maple Bush,” she said.

The RM administers the taxes for the regional park. It sends out the notices and collects them, and then remits the correct amount back to the park. The RM declined to comment on the dispute.

The water project

Wiebe and MacDonald believe, and the Saskatchewan Regional Parks Association (SRPA) confirmed, that the increase is at least in part to pay for a new water treatment project for the park. And the cottage development believes its residents are paying more than their fair share of the project.

Wiebe believed the project would cost about $1 million after grant money was taken into account. With 103 cottages – about a third of them permanent residents – after three years the development’s taxes would add up to about half the cost of the project, even though he said it only accounts for 25 per cent of the water usage in the park.

MacDonald said the development had offered the park $250,000 to help pay for an appropriate portion, and in return wanted to be part owners of the project, however the park turned the offer down.

“We didn’t want to just build it for them and then pay for the water – we’ll still be paying for the water once it ever gets up and running,” said MacDonald.

In a document provided by MacDonald and Wiebe, the SRPA said it “STRONGLY” advises parks to retain ownership of their own infrastructure.

No votes

Despite their frustrations, MacDonald and Wiebe don’t have any recourse besides making complaints.

In Regina or Saskatoon, for example, citizens vote for the people making decisions about their taxes and if they don’t like an increase, they can vote their councillor out in the next election. However, that’s not an option for those in this cottage development.

The park board is appointed by the nearby RMs and communities which founded the regional park, and the year-round residents in the development can’t vote in any of those communities or RMs.

The Ministry of Government Relations confirmed the park has the authority to both charge a lease fee and levy a property tax, and works with the local RMs to do the latter. It said if residents of the park have concerns, they can bring them directly to the park authority.

“I’m in this little kingdom called the regional park and the only people I can vote for is the community council who collect money from me to provide the services, which is fair governance,” said MacDonald.

The development had a representative on the park board for a short while, after MacDonald said the residents had been told the park bylaws had been changed to allow it. But after some upset and finagling over whether a bylaw was actually changed, the member was removed.

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Now that the development doesn’t have anyone on the board, Wiebe said there’s frustration over transparency because it’s difficult to find out what the board is doing. He said the board doesn’t share what it’s working on and minutes weren’t being supplied to the founding RMs.

“That is a huge part of it, is the lack of transparency … essentially, it seems to us like they’re running this park like it’s their own private club,” said Wiebe.

“A lot of the stuff individually sounds just nit-picky, but when you add it all up into one big picture, there’s a lot of corruption, and accountability that just isn’t there on a government level.”

No one from the park board, the founding RMs or communities responded to requests for comment or would speak on record with 980 CJME. The park manager declined to speak as well, saying the situation was in the hands of lawyers.

The 2025 taxes were due by the end of the year, but it appears development residents have chosen to withhold the money in an attempt to get things sorted out. MacDonald didn’t seem optimistic for a resolution, though.

“They’re going to say, ‘If you don’t like it, leave,’ and it’s because we’re in a legal loophole – we are unique in all of Saskatchewan,” she said.

Stepping in

The Saskatchewan Regional Parks Association is trying to handle the dispute and find a solution for all parties.

Madison Giesbrecht, Executive Director of the SRPA, said this is one of the largest disputes she’s aware of between a regional park and a stakeholder group.

She explained that nothing the park is doing contravenes the Regional Parks Act – it’s legally allowed to levy a mill rate – so the SRPA doesn’t necessarily have authority to intervene and make changes itself, but she said it’s trying to help the park with its operations to support transparency and information sharing.

When it comes to regional parks like this, Giesbrecht said they usually levy a mill rate as well as a lease fee – the average mill rate is 4.19 and the average lease fee is $1,052. She said some parks only levy one of those, but then they will usually have a higher rate for the other.

“It can look very different park to park, as we know, every park is quite different from each other. There is no one-size-fits-all,” said Giesbrecht.

This year, Giesbrecht said there will be a reassessment done for the value of the properties in Palliser Regional Park.

“(It) will hopefully help to mitigate some of that portion of things,” she said.

She said it is rare to see a community within a park paying for and administering its own services, but that other parts of Palliser Regional Park, which had been getting services, were paying higher lease fees.

“Services typically come out of the lease, where the mill rate is more about operating budget, infrastructure improvements within the park,” explained Giesbrecht.

She couldn’t speak to the actual plans the park board has, but said it would be possible for the mill rate to be reduced once the water project is paid for. Five years ago, the mill rate was reduced from 1.5 to 0.1. Though she also said the mill rate was historically low, and was barely covering the administration costs for the RM taxation.

SRPA helping out

In response to the concerns from the development and others in the park, the SRPA appears to be getting very involved in the park’s operations for the next while.

Giesbrecht said it will join Palliser Regional Park meetings, likely for the next year, to make sure actions and discussions are being followed through with.

She said there were a couple of meetings planned for January, one of which would include a recommendation from the association for the park to include a temporary position on its board to be held by a cottage development member.

There’s also a public forum in the works, likely for June, Giesbrecht said. She explained the expectation is that the forum will have a discussion focused on the mill rate, the property reassessment, and information on the water project.

She said the association will also be attending the forum to make sure responses are communicated publicly and on the record. The association will also be working with the park board on formal documentation practices – written correspondence and confirmation of receipt of emails – and on making meeting minutes for the past seven years accessible on the park website.

After the town forum, Giesbrecht said there will be a discussion with the park board and cottage development about making the bylaw change to have someone representing the development permanently on the board.

Giesbrecht said the SRPA is also working on base bylaws and governance documents that parks can use so something like this dispute doesn’t happen again.