Court sides with B.C. Assessment on Hydro station
B.C. Hydro has lost its court appeal challenging three years of valuations that B.C. Assessment put on the Horsey substation on Topaz Avenue in Victoria.
The Crown corporations squared off over the correct method to calculate the value of the 3.7-acre property housing the substation. The facility supplies power to more than 7,400 customers, including those in downtown Victoria.
The latest assessed value of the land and buildings combined is $30.738 million.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Brundrett dismissed B.C. Hydro’s appeal that the assessment should be set by considering the substation as one single industrial improvement.
In a decision released Friday, Brundrett said he will not intervene in the finding of the Property Assessment Appeal Board on Feb. 21, 2017. He agreed with B.C. Assessment and the appeal board that the substation’s value should be based instead on a collection of individual improvements.
Under that system, the assessor sets depreciation by looking at the ages of individual components at the substation.
The question was about which method is in line with the provincial Assessment Act and Depreciation Regulation.
This is new territory in the province. “The precise issue here of how to classify a substation subject to assessment has not arisen previously in B.C.,” Brundrett said.
B.C. Hydro appealed the 2014 to 2016 assessments of the property assessment appeal board, which supported B.C. Assessment’s assessor.
The 2014 assessed value at Topaz Avenue was $22.485 million, the 2015 value was $23.739 million, and the 2016 value was $23.482 million. In 2017, the assessment moved up to $23.941 million and it jumped to more than $30 million for this year, Assessment records show.
“By using the chronological age of individual components, the substation would be treated as a newer building, and hence more valuable for tax purposes — presumably resulting in more tax owing by B.C. Hydro,” Brundrett said.
The decision did not state what the value would have been under B.C. Hydro’s method. Hydro was not immediately able to provide it.
City of Victoria records show that for each of the years of 2014 through to 2016, the general and school taxes combined were close to or slightly more than $600,000. The 2017 taxes for the property rose to $640,000. This year’s taxes have not been released yet.
B.C. Hydro completed $65 million in upgrades at Horsey substation two years ago. Old electrical equipment was replaced with new, more reliable technology with a 50-year lifespan.