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A struggling 76-year-old Edmonton Legion is hoping the city council will provide financial assistance to help offset more than $100,000 in overdue property tax payments so they can keep their doors open.
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The Kingsway Legion, located in the northeast of the city, is two years behind in paying taxes and continues to rack up penalties. Former president Ron Wills said the legion’s financial situation became dire at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, losing the majority of its income from hall rentals and food sales. What were typically large-scale events four nights a week turned into small-capacity bookings six days a month.
The Legion is an integral part of the community providing a space for veterans, families and senior groups to come together and Willis said they don’t want to lose this center.
To make matters worse, the legion building has started to leak and the roof needs repairs. When the pandemic struggles hit, Wills said the Legion Council made the targeted decision to use its limited funds to pay other bills and defer tax payments, without realizing the impact of the penalties.
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“We had managed to stay above everything else. We made the critical choice to suspend our tax payments to pay all of our other bills so that we could keep lights and electricity in the building so people could do things, not thinking the city would hit us so hard with back taxes,” he said in an interview with Postmedia.
Tax bills not paid by the June 30 deadline could receive a penalty of up to 15% for the rest of the year and 1.25% for each month thereafter. As a result, the 2020 legion tax amount accrued a penalty of over 45% of the outstanding balance. That equates to nearly $1,500 in penalties per month, Wills said.
Willis said the Legion is seeking city support for overdue payments before the 2022 tax bill hits, which could be the death knell for the group.
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Region County. Aaron Paquette will present a motion at next week’s council meeting asking city staff to consider all options for providing financial assistance with the current outstanding tax balance. That could include waiving penalties or having a payment plan in place, but Paquette said he would like the council to waive any unpaid fees to ensure essential community space can remain open.
“It’s really unique circumstances and because we’ve helped individuals, we’ve helped businesses, it stands to reason that we would be helping a seniors’ organization,” said Paquette. “It is essentially a community facility and you would have to be cold enough to want to take money from the elderly at a time like this. ”
Members also launched a GoFundMe “Help keep the roof over our heads” campaign to raise $150,000. In less than two days, 117 donations totaled approximately $13,000.
