The District of West Kelowna received an early Christmas gift courtesy of the BC Assessment Authority.

Photo: Contributed

If you're a taxpayer, the news isn't quite so good.

According to Jason Sowinski with BC Assessment Authority, property values in the district have been underassessed by an average of about $10,600 per property.

That works out to approximately $750,000 in additional tax revenue at current tax rates.

Sowinski made a brief presentation during council's inaugural meeting Tuesday.

He talked of Inventory Currency, a system the authority is using to review each property in the province.

The system, according to Sowinski, is a topographical review of each property.

"Essentially, we've done two things within the District of West Kelowna. We've sourced out up to date oblique imagery...essentially aerial photographs that you take from both a topographic view and from a 45 degree angle," says Sowinski.

"We also contracted out for high quality street front imagery. They would take high quality imagery from the front of the home."

Sowinski says the authority then uses property information collectors who compare the topographical imagery with sketches of the property.

Any differences are then turned over to the assessors.

Sowinski says the technology began in Nanaimo as a pilot project in 2009 and has since been rolled out in communities in the Lower Mainland.

In Surrey alone, he says the new technology identified $3.5M in additional tax revenue as a result of new additions that were previously not detected.

West Kelowna is one of the first municipalities outside the Lower Mainland where this new system is being used.

Of the 13,400 assessment folios on the roll, Sowinski says BC Assessment Authority has reviewed about 9,900 to date.

"The total new construction inventory...inventory that is new on each property is about $105M and the average change per folio is about $10,000.

That's what you are going to see as added value for each property."

He says those numbers are comparable to what has been found in other cities across the province including Kelowna and Vernon which have also been completed.

Sowinski says some of the improvements detected may have been done years or decades ago.

"We haven't had the technology to do all of West Kelowna all at once. We certainly have attended each of these properties over the last 20 or 30 years but we would have done it more in piece meal where here we had an opportunity to go through the entire community," says Sowinski.

He cautions that municipalities do not have the authority to collect back taxes on those properties.

"One of the things I campaigned on was expanding our tax base, thank you very much," says Councillor Rusty Ensign.

Once council begins tax deliberations early in the new year it will have the option to give the taxpayer a tax break, use the funds to prop up reserves or use it for new projects.