Halifax approves largest capital budget in municipality's history

[Keith P.]

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.

[Antigonish]

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.

[Querce]

Talk about a meaningless headline, "Wow, the city has a record population AND has record spending? Crazy!"

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Querce

Talk about a meaningless headline, "Wow, the city has a record population AND has record spending? Crazy!"

The article is not clear at all. Did the mill rate go up? I don't think the stated 4.6% increase can be an increase to the rate because coupled with rising assessments this seems like it would generate much higher bills than are given as an example.

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.

[LikesBikes]

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.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by LikesBikes

As a growing city, there are lots of investments that need to happen.

If the city is growing, then the assessment roll is growing. That growth is what should fund any necessary growth-related expenditures. This goes well beyond that. Much of it is due to wasteful and unnecessary spending by HRM.

[LikesBikes]

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.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by LikesBikes

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.

Nova Scotia already has a carbon pricing scheme in place, and in theory this is meant to be transparent so that organizations like HRM can do the right thing simply by optimizing costs rather than treating the global climate like a separate item to worry about.

[kzt79]

Originally Posted by someone123

The article is not clear at all. Did the mill rate go up? I don't think the stated 4.6% increase can be an increase to the rate because coupled with rising assessments this seems like it would generate much higher bills than are given as an example.

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.

I expect they would have been up on their hind legs BRAYING about a cut if in fact the rate were dropped?

[kzt79]

Originally Posted by someone123

Nova Scotia already has a carbon pricing scheme in place, and in theory this is meant to be transparent so that organizations like HRM can do the right thing simply by optimizing costs rather than treating the global climate like a separate item to worry about.

It’s ridiculous. People already work to conserve energy (fuel, electricity, etc). Government should do the same. Instead, they’d rather waste a bunch of money on made up foolishness with no real benefit.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by someone123

Nova Scotia already has a carbon pricing scheme in place, and in theory this is meant to be transparent so that organizations like HRM can do the right thing simply by optimizing costs rather than treating the global climate like a separate item to worry about.

Precisely. This tax is simply HRM the Good doing their usual virtue signaling on the backs of the taxpayer. Nothing HRM does in this regard will have a scintilla's worth of impact.

[spaustin]

Originally Posted by someone123

The article is not clear at all. Did the mill rate go up? I don't think the stated 4.6% increase can be an increase to the rate because coupled with rising assessments this seems like it would generate much higher bills than are given as an example.

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.

Actual residential rate is going down because assessment growth more than covers the increase. HRM talks of the budget in terms of the tax bill which is the combined impact of assessment and rate. Only order of government that does it this way. Feds and Province don't talk about taking in more sales or income taxes as raising the bill! Total increase in the tax bill is 4.6%. Of that, 3% is to pay for climate change initiatives like electric buses and other 1.6% is to cover the budget's other pressures.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by spaustin

Actual residential rate is going down because assessment growth more than covers the increase. HRM talks of the budget in terms of the tax bill which is the combined impact of assessment and rate. Only order of government that does it this way. Feds and Province don't talk about taking in more sales or income taxes as raising the bill! Total increase in the tax bill is 4.6%. Of that, 3% is to pay for climate change initiatives like electric buses and other 1.6% is to cover the budget's other pressures.

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. My tax bill has increased by a couple hundred over last year, but I'm glad to hear that the extra money will go towards things that will help us move into the future, or at least move us to a level that other cities have already achieved. Electric buses are a good start. I'd really like to see an aggressive transit/infrastructure plan that looks decades into the future to keep up with our population growth.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by spaustin

Actual residential rate is going down because assessment growth more than covers the increase. HRM talks of the budget in terms of the tax bill which is the combined impact of assessment and rate. Only order of government that does it this way. Feds and Province don't talk about taking in more sales or income taxes as raising the bill! Total increase in the tax bill is 4.6%.

That's because you and your predecessors always played the street corner shell game with the whole tax rate/tax bill peas on the public, by trumpeting that "we reduced taxes" when you had to lower the rate slightly because of assessment roll growth, then left taxpayers wondering why they still got bigger bills every year. And other govts often talk about the total bill i.e. "the average taxpayer will be paying $xxx more/less this upcoming year".

Some budgetary discipline every now and then is a good thing for govts. You guys ought to try a dose sometimes.

[Antigonish]

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.

[Keith P.]

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.

[kzt79]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Precisely. This tax is simply HRM the Good doing their usual virtue signaling on the backs of the taxpayer. Nothing HRM does in this regard will have a scintilla's worth of impact.

You could shut down our entire country and everyone in it, with zero impact on global climate trajectory. There is something to be said for leadership and setting an example, but this has to be balanced with at least a vague notion of reality.

[Jor D]

Originally Posted by kzt79

You could shut down our entire country and everyone in it, with zero impact on global climate trajectory. There is something to be said for leadership and setting an example, but this has to be balanced with at least a vague notion of reality.

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

[Antigonish]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

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.

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.

[Summerville]

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.

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.