The Harbour East Community Council consists of all the Dartmouth, Eastern Passage and Cole Harbour councillors: McCluskey, Darren Fisher, Jim Smith, Bill Karsten, Lorelei Nicoll and Jackie Barkhouse.

McCluskey says the group will send out a press release this afternoon explaining its position. I'll post the release here as soon as I receive it. Tonight's meeting will be held at 6pm, at the old Dartmouth city council chambers, 90 Alderney Drive, Dartmouth.

Read my analysis of the "tax reform" issue here.

Update, 3:40pm.

Here's the press release:

Harbour East Community Council against current proposals for Tax Reform

(Thursday, January 14, 2010) - Tonight, at its regular monthly meeting, Harbour East Community Council, which is comprised of Councillors Gloria McCluskey - Chair, Jim Smith, Bill Karsten, Jackie Barkhouse, Lorelei Nicoll, and Darren Fisher, will discuss Tax Reform, and will issue a public statement announcing that they have unanimously decided against moving forward on any of the current proposals for Tax Reform. After many meetings, much consideration and due process which have been advanced as a result of the work done by the Tax Reform Committee over the past several years, the like-minded Councillors feel it is time to speak out publicly.

The opinion of the Municipally elected group is that the proposals put forward by the tax committee shift the tax burden from a small segment of the population with high priced properties, to those with middle priced and lower priced properties. They are not supportive of substituting one method of taxation to any of the ones proposed that are deemed to have their own inequities.

For example, using 2007 numbers, under "tax reform" homeowners in Halifax's south end will see an average reduction of $2,065, a 61 percent decrease, in their property tax bills, with a resulting average bill of $1,317. Homeowners in Eastern Passage, however, will see an average *increase* in their property tax bills of $347, a 35 percent increase, resulting in an average tax bill of $1,334.

The average tax bill in Eastern Passage will be $17 more than the average tax bill in the south end, even though the average tax assessment in the south end, $432,700, is more than three times higher than the average tax assessment of $129,326 in Eastern Passage.

The document is titled "Preliminary Analysis on Best Possible Tax System." You can see it here---that is the original document, as written, but I've added the "change in taxes" column.

When the workshop was discussed by council last month, assurances were given that it would be open to the public. And it was, nominally. Only problem is, the public wasn’t actually told about the meeting: there were no press releases announcing it, no forewarnings at previous meetings, it wasn’t posted on the HRM website page listing council meetings, there was no notice to the press. To be sure, a loose agenda was posted on the “tax reform” page on the HRM website---at 4pm Friday afternoon. But no one would know to look for it there (certainly I didn’t). Basically, council just held a “public” meeting that was entirely conducted in secret.

"Tax reform"

Council spent fully two hours debating whether or not to have a future all day meeting to discuss "tax reform." If you think this sounds a little ludicrous, you're right.

Understand that when councillors received their council agendas Friday (which was also when the public and press could first access them), the "tax reform" discussion was agendized in a straight-forward manner: Five policy recommendations were put on the table, and council would vote on each. It was "shit or get off the pot" time so far as "tax reform" was concerned.

But by Monday I started hearing rumours that that straight-forward debate was going to be delayed, and sure enough, first thing at Tuesday's meeting, councillor Reg Rankin moved that council go into a future all-day "retreat" or "workshop" to discuss the issue in a less structured manner.

This proposal sent many councillors into a rage, and I don't blame them. Jim Smith, for example, complained that he spent many hours over the weekend reading through the agenda packet and checking his notes on "tax reform," preparing for what would be the most important discussion in his council career. "Had I known this would be delayed, I could have better prioritized my time," he said dryly, pointing out that some councillors were told of the delay before the weekend, and others not at all.

Smith's right to be upset; this kind of cliquish behaviour, giving inside information to some councillors and leaving others in the dark, is characteristic of council proceedings in recent years. Rankin should have notified other councillors of his intentions last week, out of simple courtesy.

Regardless, the desire for an all-day workshop stems from the recognition that the "tax reform" effort is becoming derailed. I find this fascinating, and to councillors' credit: the more they examine the proposals, and the more they think about the ramifications of those proposals, the more councillors are individually finding reasons to oppose them. Most of those councillors in opposition are not opposing "tax reform" for ideological reasons, but rather for pragmatic concerns about how it will affect their constituencies, and for concerns about general fairness---when they get into the nuts and bolts of the proposal, they soon find that many of the supposedly rational assumptions behind the various calculations are in fact arbitrary judgement calls, a fact that anyone who falls on the "pay more" side of the equation will immediately point to and condemn as unfair.

[You'll note that I put "tax reform" in quotation marks. I do this because I want to draw attention to the rhetorical ground that has been ceded to "tax reform" proponents-- how can anyone be opposed to reform? Reform is good! In reality, of course, the proposal is to completely scrap the existing tax system and replace it with something else entirely. You might agree with that proposal or not, but it has nothing at all to do with "reform."]

Still, even though many-- by my rough calculation, most-- councillors are now in opposition to "tax reform," there's not yet a consistent rhetorical or ideological thread shared by opponents. So Rankin and other proponents are hoping to use an all-day workshop to cajole the opponents into buying into the plan. Their hope appears to be that a workshop is more conducive to swaying fence sitters than would be possible under the tight rules of debate that govern council meetings.

But I don't think that plan will work. Already several councillors--- Jennifer Watts firstly, but backed up strongly by Gloria McCluskey and Tim Outhit--- have insisted that a workshop not simply consist of "tax reform" proponents bullying opponents. They want outside experts brought in to discuss the matter; McCluskey called for bringing in the academic economists I interviewed for my recent editorial opposing "tax reform."

In the end, council agreed to the workshop, but left open exactly who would attend, the format, etc. All this will apparently be worked out in that secretive agenda setting world managed by CAO Dan English and mayor Peter Kelly. But even if they try to railroad through an entirely pro-"tax reform" workshop, they'll get called on it, and that strategy will backfire.

To summarize: it appears to me that "tax reform" is dead in the water. And, good riddance.

I quote three economists in the editorial, but for space reasons I was unable to provide supporting documentation that two of the economists had given me. I'll do so here.

First, Lars Osberg sent me 14 pages from his textbook, Principles of Microeconomics, which deal specifically with these taxation issues. It's an easy read, and examines the various forms of taxation, with their pluses and minuses. I strongly suggest that anyone who wants to change our existing system read these pages.

Second, Mathieu Dufour sent me his notes on the tax committee's report, which are also worth reading.

Of course, I'll have much more on all of these issues, when tax reform comes before council in September.