Burlington Quarry Extension Contributes More to the Local Tax Base
Community Benefits The proposed extension of our Burlington quarry will generate an additional $200,000 of annual tax revenue for Burlington.(July,2007)
Burlington Quarry Extension – Contributing More to the Local Tax Base
The proposed extension of our Burlington quarry to the south side of No. 2 Sideroad will generate an additional $200,000 of annual revenue for Burlington with no additional demand for city services.
Our Burlington quarry, located on No. 2 Sideroad has been supplying the City of Burlington and Region of Halton with high quality crushed stone for over 50 years. Through its history, Nelson Aggregate Co. has been an active and supportive member of the community, and continues to seek ways to support the city and benefit the region.
One of those benefits is having a quarry source close to the market it serves because it reduces the cost of transporting the material to the job sites. This results in less expensive construction costs for roads, schools, houses, offices, and so on. Almost three quarters of our quarry’s production continues to be used directly for projects located in Halton.
The Ministry of Natural Resources estimates that 50% of all aggregate goes into public works. Tax dollars pay for public works, regardless of whether the projects are funded by the province or the local municipality. By lowering public construction costs, tax dollars can go further.
Nelson’s Burlington operation pays large sums of annual business and property taxes to federal, provincial, and municipal governments. That governmental revenue is not offset with benefits such as municipal water, sewage services, or school services, so every dollar of taxes goes to supplying those services to other members of the community.
This year our Burlington quarry will pay $221,000 in municipal taxes. In addition to that amount, the quarry annually pays approximately $200,000 of aggregate extraction license fees. Two-thirds of those license fees go directly to the local municipalities with the balance to the province.
Nelson Aggregate Co. has applied for a license to extract aggregate from a 200 acre parcel of land adjacent to its existing Burlington quarry. If the license application is approved, the company taxes on that land would rise from the current $13,000 per year up to approximately $220,000.
Altogether, if the license application is successful, the Burlington quarry operation will be contributing approximately $641,000 annually to municipal and provincial tax bases.
In addition to the increase in direct local revenue, the quarry will continue to annually purchase $11 million in goods and services, most of which are locally supplied. And, as it has for more than two decades, the quarry actively recycles used concrete and asphalt materials, and surplus, clean fill from area construction projects is used in the quarry’s progressive rehabilitation program. These activities divert hundreds of thousands of tonnes of fill from taking up valuable space in area landfills.
