Series consists of records documenting the levying of special assessments to finance various infrastructure improvements in neighbourhoods across the city, including construction of sidewalks, paving roads, installation of street lighting, and construction of community centres and other public amenities. Local improvement assessments are levied separately from property taxes, applied to the properties that benefit from the particular improvement.
Local improvements could be initiated either by petition from property owners in a particular neighbourhood, or by recommendation of a City department. Property owners were able to appeal a proposed local improvement assessment at the Court of Revision; as a consequence, not all proposed improvements were completed. Council would decide which proportion of the improvement would be financed by property owners and which from City finances. Each assessment and any associated debt financing was authorised by its own individual by-law, and the individual projects were referred to by the by-law number in the records.
Infrastructure projects would ordinarily be financed by the issue of debentures; part of the assessments levied on property owners would fund the interest payable on the debentures, with the remainder paid into the Sinking Fund to accumulate the capital required to pay off the debenture on maturity.
Records in the series consist of ledgers showing assessments levied on individual properties. Each assessment shows the frontage and/or flankage of the property (from which the assessment amount was calculated), and the assessed amount, by legal land description of each assessed property. The schedules are considered an integral part of the by-law which authorised the assessment, but after about 1950 they were physically filed with the Office of the Assessment Commissioner (until 1977), then the Property Tax office instead of bound with the original by-law.
The series also contains an index to the earliest local improvement by-laws, listing by street name the various types of assessment by-laws and by-law numbers.
Vancouver (B.C.). Assessment Division