Halifax approves largest capital budget in municipality's history

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Jor D

there used to be a push to rid the city of expressways in favour of mass transit like subways and such for fighting climate change, but now with the electric car soon to be the norm, highways are needed more than ever

EVs are great, but they're not a cure-all for climate change, and even if they were, there are a lot of other good reasons to reduce car use, especially in cities: noise pollution, safety concerns, and most obviously, the fact that you just can't have a properly dense and attractive city centre and also have all the car infrastructure needed to get around smoothly.

Even in a small city like Halifax, you can't have 100,000 people in a small area like the peninsula using a car as their primary transport and expect anything less than horrible congestion. So we still need to have lots of mass transit and other transport options.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Even in a small city like Halifax, you can't have 100,000 people in a small area like the peninsula using a car as their primary transport and expect anything less than horrible congestion. So we still need to have lots of mass transit and other transport options.

It's hard to see how Halifax isn't already far behind on transit. It takes a long time to build higher order transit and that planning hasn't started yet. Maybe remote working from the pandemic added a bit more slack time. Growth could drop off too although there's no particular reason to expect that, and planning should cover a wide range of outcomes (it's much better to shelve an unneeded project than be unable to support new growth).

The BRT plan looks good but there's a disconnect between the scale of it, its timeline, and how much growth is happening now. The ferries are nice too but only work for a small percentage of trips. Discussion also seems to fixate on suburban commuters and single route "fixes" ("will we use commuter rail or the ferry to fix our traffic woes?") when high growth is happening in the urban core and that's where a disproportionate number of transit users will come from.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by Antigonish

Any idea if there are some kind of documents, reports, etc that can help quantify this? I'm on your wave length, but I guess people won't truly believe you without [source? source?? do you have a source for that? a reputable one??]. I can see it being a disaster here without proper convincing through a more 'professional' approach.

I did some preliminary searching online and found a few post-mortems, but most were done within a few years of amalgamation and did not look at what happened another 10-15 years along. It was interesting that one I found regarding the HRM exercise identified a few million in savings from reducing competition among the former municipalities in respect to business park development as one of the main benefits, not foreseeing how HRM would become a billion-dollar operation with a hugely expensive and bloated bureaucracy as it now is. I think the takeaway is that what seemed important at the time turned out to be pocket change compared to the monster organization that was created which takes on a very expensive mind of its own. To that point I find it amazing every time I drive around the city and see the forest of construction cranes popping up like dandelions, yet HRM Council still had the gall to pass a budget imposing an average 4.6% tax increase on citizens despite all that upcoming assessment roll growth.

[Querce]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

yet HRM Council still had the gall to pass a budget imposing an average 4.6% tax increase on citizens despite all that upcoming assessment roll growth.

Keith, the tax rate is going down. It's only because of the assessment increases that the amount the average property owner pays is going up.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by Querce

Keith, the tax rate is going down. It's only because of the assessment increases that the amount the average property owner pays is going up.

You should run for Council! You already have the old shell game they play with tax rates down pat.

The 4.6 increase relates to the average bill as HRM calculated it. The bill a taxpayer receives is the only thing that matters year over year. Council knows all the variables in play each budget year. The tax rate is the end product of their thirst for revenue. But on its own, it is meaningless.

[IanWatson]

The tax increase is much less than inflation, AND includes a whole bunch of new initiatives. Seems like a pretty good deal to me.

On the topic of amalgamation, I doubt you’ll find much objective analysis of their successes and failures. There’s been too few of them to draw any meaningful conclusions. Summerville is right though that your best bet for an anecdotal evaluation of a similar scale and context would be Queens County. Three Rivers in PEI may also be worth a look, though they are only recently amalgamated. HRM likely will not be informative as it was a situation mainly driven by three cities who were competing with each other, rather than the coming together of rural and urban areas to share resources.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by IanWatson

The tax increase is much less than inflation, AND includes a whole bunch of new initiatives. Seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Given the runaway inflation caused by both our federal govt and world events, an even better deal would have been for HRM to exercise some budgetary restraint, let the explosive growth fund the costs related to that, and give the put-upon HRM taxpayers a break.

[IanWatson]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Given the runaway inflation caused by both our federal govt and world events, an even better deal would have been for HRM to exercise some budgetary restraint, let the explosive growth fund the costs related to that, and give the put-upon HRM taxpayers a break.

I mean, HRM is victim of those same inflationary pressures. Asphalt and labour certainly aren't going to be cheaper this year. They're buffered a bit by the fact that property tax intakes will increase due to inflation, but it's not one-to-one. Assessment values lag by two years.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by IanWatson

I mean, HRM is victim of those same inflationary pressures. Asphalt and labour certainly aren't going to be cheaper this year. They're buffered a bit by the fact that property tax intakes will increase due to inflation, but it's not one-to-one. Assessment values lag by two years.

Well, sometimes in times of financial turmoil, business have to adjust. Lay off employees, close subpar locations, defer planned projects. There is nothing that would prevent HRM from doing the same. I'm sure we wouldn't miss a few bureaucrats...