Rising property taxes and more expected from Halifax council agenda

Everyone’s favourite administrative body, the Property Valuation Services Corporation, will present the new property tax numbers to this week’s regular meeting of city council, Tuesday Jan 14. If this year is like every other year, assessments will go up and in the coming 2025/26 financial year the average tax bill will be going up a couple hundred dollars per household. That means we’ll find out at this meeting what the mill rate is, and if it’s like previous years expect a 1% tax increase or decrease in that rate to be about $80 per household per percent. We’ll have to wait and see though, because there’s no report attached to this item on the meeting agenda.

Speaking of the agenda, there’s more to it than property assessments. Here’s what our elected officials will be dealing with Tuesday, and some thoughts from The Coast’s City Hall reporter on how they’ll be dealing, starting with another another property thing: 1300 Oxford Street is likely to become a heritage property.

If the Early Childhood Interventionists Association of Nova Scotia doesn’t file for the tax relief they are eligible for, they will likely be able to rent the city space at 45 Connolly Road for approximately $9,005 a year plus property taxes, if council approves this motion, which they are likely to.

Councillors are in the final stages of filling out board appointments and committee rosters. Councillor Kathrine Morse is headed to the Canadian Urban Transit Association. Councillors Trish Purdy, Laura White and Jean St-Amand are going to the Accessibility Advisory Board. Councillors Virginia Hinch and John A. Young are headed to the African Decent Advisory Committee. And councillor Nancy Hartling joins Hinch on the Women and Gender Equity Advisory Committee. All of these terms will end in November 2026, when the committee rosters will get their mid-term refresh.

The city conducted its annual resident survey, and “overall, results have trended downward from 2018, with notable decreases in perceptions of quality of life, value for taxes, overall and service-specific satisfaction, and generally with municipal performance. Residents note housing affordability and availability as the top issue facing the municipality.” Survey participation is down due to the fall’s mail strike, but still comparable to previous years. Some notable findings include that “43% of residents indicated they received very good or good value for the property taxes they paid; a decline from 72% in 2021.” Long-term readers will recognize this as public opinion catching up to the realization that HRM’s fiscal management in housing and transportation could not be better designed to cause municipal insolvency if they were trying to bankrupt the city.

Our smart street lights talk to our smart buses, but only if the modems are working—and they’re starting to fail. Council’s likely going to approve spending $769,000 to fix the modems and update the IT infrastructure.

Council is likely to approve a new Parks Lighting Strategy. This is sorely needed and a welcome addition to the municipal planning strategy roster. Here’s to hoping that, unlike most of its peers, this one affects municipal outcomes.

Because noise from pickleball negatively affects the residents of Castle Hill, the city is considering negatively affecting the people who use the Halifax North West Trails instead. In December, the Community Planning and Economic Development Standing Committee met and was told of potential locations where the Castle Hill pickleball courts could move. See this screenshot from the presentation:

Site A labelled on the graphic is also the site of the Halifax North West Trails Association’s new trailhead, built with volunteer labour and donations from the community. Site B is the location of their next planned trailhead, and according to the Mainland Commons Master Plan, that green bit is a Passive Recreation Reserve where only trails are allowed. Nothing says equitable, progressive, climate-friendly city like removing some nature forever due to a noise complaint.

Councillor St-Amand is going to ask for a staff report to see if volunteer firefighters should be allowed to have flashing green lights on their personal vehicles. The issue is that in rural areas there are fire stations made up of half volunteer, half professional firefighters. The professionals, waiting at the station for emergencies, have no problem making it to the fire trucks. The volunteers, waiting at home for emergencies, struggle to make it to the fire trucks at the station due to congestion. This may have some pretty serious liability risks for the city. For example, what happens if a volunteer runs a red traffic light with their flashing green dash light but hits another driver, and one of them dies? So, St-Amand’s asking for some risk analysis to see if sending a letter to the province asking for this change is a good idea.

And last but not least, councillor Purdy wants to know if the city can better mitigate the pollution—noise and otherwise, caused by the operation of construction and demolition facilities that are close to people’s houses.