The mayor of Halifax says if the budget committee started from scratch, they would have been able to bring the property tax rate down, avoiding the 9.5 per cent increase.
Andy Fillmore made the comments to our newsroom Wednesday, after months of lengthy debate and one day after the budget passed. He was one of three who voted against.
Before the vote, Councillors Trish Purdy and Deputy Mayor Patty Cuttell said they don’t think the outcome would have been different even if they went back to the drawing board.
The mayor disagrees.
“If we did the budget all over again, I think we would find more savings,” said Fillmore. “The message would have been clear had it failed…go back, try harder to bring that rate down.”
He said you should always vote with your conscious, because that’s how democracy works, but thinks they could have found more savings.
“Households are struggling to pay for the increased cost of groceries, the Halifax water bill is going up, the Nova Scotia Power bill is going up, we’ve got gas going through the roof because of the war [in Iran],” explained Fillmore. “People are on the ropes here.”
Over the last few months, Council took another look at some big-ticket items to try and bring taxes down including the AAA bike lane network, the redevelopment of the Halifax Forum and the Mill Cove Ferry. However, all three will continue on.
Some changes that we can expect are paid Saturday parking in the city’s downtown as well as the addition of ten Halifax Transit buses to the city’s fleet.
It was all in an effort to avoid a big spike to property taxes, which at one point looked like an 11.2 per cent hike.
Fillmore said he is happy that there were no cuts to core services such as police, fire and transit. In addition, a debt ceiling was implemented.
“So, we will never pay more than 12 per cent of our annual operating budget for debt service. Without that, we were heading up to as high as 19 per cent. That’s a fifth of our operating budget,” said Fillmore.
As for the future, Fillmore said he made a motion for the next budget to be “bare bones” to allow for increases for things like inflation and collective bargaining.
“The tax bill is too high. But I have to go along with what Council decided, and I’ll carry on my work keeping life affordable in all the ways I can in the year ahead.”
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