This is the last budget several HRM councillors will get the chance to approve in City Hall, and they seemed to be happy to go out on a high note.
“Hats off to everybody,” said Gloria McCluskey, who won’t be re-offering this fall. “I sat here, I don’t know how many years and I voted against the budget…I feel completely happy with this budget.”
Regional council unanimously approved 2016-17’s billion dollar operating and capital budgets on Tuesday, increasing the city’s spending on capital projects while continuing to pay down the municipality’s debt and once again keeping taxes flat.
It’s a “good news” budget, as councillors repeatedly told media in attendance and those watching at home.
“I really want to know what we can tell our public, our media, when we pass this later today,” said Tim Outhit. “This will be the third time in four years we’ve passed a no-increase budget.”
In total the municipality budgeted $724,728,100 for operational services this year—a drop of about two million dollars from last fiscal year. Those savings were achieved through cuts in operating funds, along with the new solid waste contract and reductions in HRM’s fuel, salt and electricity consumption.
A separate $197,934,000 capital budget was also unanimously passed by council that will put $48 million towards roads and active transportation and $26.4 million towards expanding and upgrading Halifax Transit. The construction of the new Dartmouth four-pad arena, public WiFi, LED streetlight conversion and an overhaul of the city’s website services are also now on the books for 2016-17.
But councillor Barry Dalrymple, also not running in this fall’s election, was hesitant to support the plans given what he felt was an uneven divide between funding for urban and rural services.
“This is a phenomenally urban budget,” Dalrymple said, who admitted later to reporters that there were still enough “higher-arching” positives in the budget to win his endorsement.
“There are all kinds of good things. This is a very, very good budget for residents of HRM. It is the spending aspect I think could have been distributed more fairly.”
Mostly everyone couldn’t shut up about how great the budget is and how strong Halifax (and Dartmouth) are doing in terms of fiscal health. Population and development growth continue, the municipality’s debt is dropping (now down nearly $100 million from where it was in 1999) and HRM was able to avoid a tax increase. Property taxes are actually decreasing, but rising assessment costs means the majority of residential and a smaller percentage of commercial property owners won’t notice any difference.
Jennifer Watts—also not running again in the next election—approved of the budget but cautioned future council members about avoiding tax increases. If the financial situation worsens for any reason, Watts said, raising taxes will be inevitable and that’s okay.
“It’s not a burden. It’s our tax responsibility.”
You can read all the budget documents here.
