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Originally Posted by someone123
The numbers seem wrong and the inflation story is confusing. Aren't housing prices going up much faster than inflation? Shouldn't this cause assessments to go up and dramatically raise HRM revenues given a fixed mill rate? Are they raising the mill rate on top of this? $400M additional revenue does not sound right.
I'm not opposed to the idea of climate change initiatives but where is the coordination? If we really care about climate change isn't the best thing for the federal government to implement a carbon tax to "price in" HRM emissions? Canada has a tax like this already, and we need only debate what the price per ton of CO2 should be (set it at the cost of sequestration, spend the revenues from that tax on sequestration, and all activity is net zero). With a correctly set carbon tax you don't need triplicate baroque climate measures, you just need the provinces and municipalities to look after their costs which they do already. Of course, the simple solution sadly doesn't give politicians much opportunity to be seen as climate warriors.
One thing I wonder is why HRM hasn't done more on affordable housing. We keep hearing councillors talk about how this is an important issue to them, though they sometimes pass the buck to the province and complain about the province. Do HRM councillors think this issue is in hand now, and there are no more people who might need to live in tents or those huts? What about housing affordability in terms of rising property tax bills paid for by people who are already stretched (this includes tenants)? I would say this is much more squarely within their ability to solve than climate change is.
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The CBC article is based on a report going to the Budget Committee:
https://www.halifax.ca/sites/default...211123bc06.pdf
The report indicates that staff are anticipating the city will require a 2.9% increase in the average property tax
bill based on known or expected incremental costs and initiatives. If property values in HRM increase by the same 2.9% there would not be any increase in the tax rate. Since market rates would seem to indicate that values have increased by much more than 2.9% the tax rate may very well decrease. The impact on any individual property owner will of course depend on how much the assessment of their property changed, particularly since the increase in values has been different in different parts of the city.
In addition to this, staff are recommending a new 3% tax to tackle HRM specific initiatives related to climate change such as electric vehicles, net-zero buildings, multi-modal transit corridors and other initiatives.
This is the first step in the budget setting process. The final tax rates will likely be somewhat different and could include initiatives to address the housing crisis once the budget gets to council and they start to debate it.