Wednesday morning, the HRM’s audit and finance committee met to find out just how dire the city’s financial situation is.
City staff told the committee that first quarter reporting shows Halifax is expecting to be out approximately $20 million due to climate change—and a municipal public service that’s incapable of dealing with climate emergencies.
So far this year, the city is lowballing climate change-related damage costs at $4.4 million for Fiona, $13.7 million for the Tantallon wildfire and $2.4 million for the Bedford floods. City staff are recommending the HRM empty its risk and resiliency fund to deal with this year’s localized climate emergencies.
Chief financial officer Jerry Blackwood and his staff also explained to council that, although they do expect to get this money back from the provincial government, it won’t be for years—maybe decades—until the city sees it. During the conversation, staff revealed that the HRM hasn’t gotten money back from the province for damages caused by Dorian in 2019 because they didn’t apply for it. Blackwood said the finance department determined putting together a claim to the province would cost the city more than it would get back. In other words, your taxes go to fund a bureaucracy so ineffective that two levels of government—both supported by your tax dollars—couldn’t get their shit together to help us bail ourselves out after an emergency.
Chief administrative officer Cathie O’Toole will come back with a report explaining why the city did this. Hopefully her report will also include an explanation about how the former CAO managed to hide this information from our elected officials.
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One of the big reasons the fires in Tantallon cost $13.7 million is because the city spent $11 million on fencing. When the fire tore through Bedford, approximately 12,000 people were evacuated from their homes. When the fire was no longer an immediate threat, people wanted to go back home. In order to get people back home, the city had to cordon off properties that were unsafe, which required fencing.
Since this was an emergency, the city’s procurement process was unable to get a competitive bid and it was forced to use a standing offer (or decide not to allow people to go home). A standing offer is a pre-approved vendor the city can call on short notice to do required work. The city used to have robust public works departments for these types of things but, like almost every other city, the HRM has cut public service piecemeal over the years to save money. And while that saves money in the short term, it often costs money in the long term—like it did in this case.
Anyway, because the city used a standing offer with a private company, it paid a premium for the fencing. Behold, in all its glory, the cost-efficiency of Canadian public-private partnerships! Blackwood clarified that P3s aren’t often great in emergencies as they are too quick to be competitive, which results in higher costs to taxpayers.
More than most other meetings in recent memory, this audit and finance committee demonstrated that the bureaucracy of the HRM has failed in its responsible use of P3 contracting, and a there has been a more fundamental failure in that our municipal government hasn’t maintained a public service capable of serving the public as we head into the throes of a climate emergency.
If only the warnings of 2003 had been heeded.
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This article appears in Sep 1-30, 2023.