Halifax approves largest capital budget in municipality's history
HRM Council never fails to disappoint:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-...dget-1.6417484 The comments of the rabble in the above story (Pam Berman still in there pitching!) are unanimous in their disapproval. Time to throw the bums out once and for all. |
This 'pay more taxes to change the weather' approach just isn't on anymore, especially with out of control inflation and a shitty job market with bad pay. It's time bureaucrats and "public servants" need to realize that pitching platitudes that are in no way pragmatic is not a solution to the current world problems. My patience is running thin.
|
Talk about a meaningless headline, "Wow, the city has a record population AND has record spending? Crazy!"
|
Quote:
The population growth is around 2% and the official inflation rate is around 5% so a stable tax level would lead to budget growth of approximately 7%. If the budget growth is 4.6% HRM taxes are dropping year over year in real per capita terms. |
As a growing city, there are lots of investments that need to happen. If taxes need to go up to pay for those then I am ok with that. If anything, I wish the council was more ambitious with planning for the future and have large-scale projects in the works, such as rapid transit, housing and public work projects.
|
Quote:
|
The climate change actions sound pretty reasonable to me. I'm happy to pay a little more to protect the coastline and make capital investments that will pay off in the long term, such as buying electric buses and solar panels.
I don't know all the details about this budget and am admittedly relatively new to Halifax, but from my experience so far it seems like there's quite a bit of potential for improving municipal servicing, at least in terms of its public transit and active transportation infrastructure. I hope the increased budget will improve those items. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
Some budgetary discipline every now and then is a good thing for govts. You guys ought to try a dose sometimes. |
I apologize (sorry mods) if this is a bit off topic but in regards to rates and infrastructure costs in HRM since amalgamation, is there data, reports etc available that has this information gathered? Here in Antigonish, the town and county government has expressed renewed interest in municipal amalgamation (similar to HRM) and I am not in favor of it; I'd like to send them a report with these rate changes and comparisons as an argument against it but provide a compromise proposal, assuming they\d be willing to accept it with their open forum. Again, sorry if I'm piggybacking off this thread but any information would really help guys/gals. :)
|
Amalgamation would always make sense in theory but what we saw here in NS at least failed to deliver on the promise of efficiencies and reduced costs. Aside from the costs of the amalgamation itself - paying consultants to design and lay out the new organization, having 3 or 4 incumbents compete for the one (bigger) job closest to the one they did, then paying severance to the losers; adjusting all bureaucrat salaries upwards to the highest level of any in the various units in the name of equity; then realizing that many of those anointed as successful candidates were in way over their heads in terms of doing the much more complex new job, leading to dysfunction, more severance, and instability in the bureaucracy. Since bureaucrats, like nature, abhor a vacuum, in the newly created municipality you often have internecine turf wars over who really holds power and pulls the strings, as top bureaucrats wrestle for ever-more lucrative and powerful positions.
Then you have the issues of integrating various information systems, which usually mean throwing everything out and buying newer, bigger and far more expensive systems; dealing with all the fixed assets, getting unions to agree to change who they represent (which is usually long, painful and often a hopeless task) and then dealing with their demands for members to all be raised up to the highest level someone else now under the same umbrella is making. Getting rid of redundant union members is also almost impossible or at the very least quite costly. Just look at the examples of both HRM and CBRM for how things can go so badly wrong. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
But you should look at the amalgamation that happened in Queens County which would be more in line with something that could happen in Antigonish. The HRM example is not a good one. |
All times are GMT. The time now is 12:56 AM. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.