Last week, Dartmouth area councillors took an unprecedented public stand against the so-called “tax reform” proposal, which will likely come before the full Halifax council this Tuesday, January 26.
The Harbour East Community Council—which consists of Dartmouth councillors Gloria McCluskey, Jim Smith, Bill Karsten and Darren Fisher, Cole Harbour councillor Lorelei Nicoll and Eastern Passage councillor Jackie Barkhouse—unanimously passed a resolution in opposition to “tax reform.”
“Tax reform” is a proposal to radically transform the municipal property tax system proposal I’ve been following to a “fee for services” system. Under the present system, owners pay taxes based on the value of their property—high-priced homes pay more than modest homes. Under the proposal, property owners would pay the same flat fee for services received, regardless of the value of the property. In effect, owners of high-end properties would see their taxes slashed by thousands of dollars, with lost revenue made up by increasing taxes on owners of lower-valued homes and apartments.
The proposal would hit the Dartmouth area hard. A City Hall report shows that, for single-family homes in Eastern Passage, city taxes would go up on average 35 percent under the proposal. In North Dartmouth, the figure is 31 percent. My own analysis (see “Why everyone loses under the city’s property tax plan,” December 10) found that the owners of North Dartmouth apartment complexes housing tens of thousands of low-income residents would see tax increases of several hundred dollars per unit, costs that would surely be rolled into rent increases.
“[The tax reform] proposals…shift the tax burden from a small segment of the population with high priced properties, to those with middle priced and lower priced properties,” reads the councillors’ statement. “[We] are not supportive of substituting one method of taxation to any of the ones proposed that are deemed to have their own inequities.”
“This is the first time that a political statement like this has come out of a community council,” said Karsten. “It’s a bold move, a strong statement.”
“This is the single most important decision that I’ve made as a councillor,” said Barkhouse. “I’m 100 percent certain it’s the right thing to do. We’re going to take a bashing for this statement, but if there is a ship I’m going down on, this is it.”
McCluskey and Smith have been opposed to the proposal from the start. Nicoll, who would see her own taxes drop by about $1,400 annually, said she opposes “tax reform” because it would shift the tax burden onto those least able to afford it.
Darren Fisher, who replaced ardent “tax reform” supporter [Feb. 22 corrections; see below] Andrew Younger in a by-election last summer, is also cousin to Bruce Fisher, the city bureaucrat overseeing the “tax reform” effort. And yet Darren Fisher is also solidly opposed to the proposal.
Meanwhile, retired Dalhousie economist Mike Bradfield and SMU business prof Larry Haivan are organizing their neighbours and other academics against the plan. Their opposition is notable because both are south end residents who stand to see thousands of dollars in tax cuts if the “tax reform” proposal is adopted.
The pair will soon bring forward an alternative tax reform plan, one they say is better and more socially just than the proposal coming before council this week. In essence, they’d like to see all property taxes reduced, with the lost tax revenue made up via an increase in the provincial income tax, with the province backfilling city coffers.
Haivan plans to bring his neighbours to an anti-“tax reform” demonstration outside City Hall Tuesday, explaining why they are opposed to cuts in their tax bills. I’ll blog the demonstration and the council debate at thecoast.ca/bites and twitter.com/twitcoast.
Correction: Andrew Younger did not, does not, and will not support the “tax reform” proposal. He explained as much to me last time I got it wrong, and yet I persist. My apologies. —TB.
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Counting “tax reform” votes…
This article appears in Jan 21-27, 2010.
For the record: my taxes would go up under the “fees for services” proposal.
In my opinion there is a place for “fees for services”, and core municipal services isn’t it. Fees for services for essential services can be, and usually are, disruptive of the social contract, whereby wealthier citizens willingly (or not so willingly) agree to chip in a bit more to help out their poorer brethren. Fees for non-essential services I have no problems with, provided that we have carefully established that the services in question are truly non-essential.
If this tax reform proposal had gone through my first step would have been to argue through my councillor that I am no longer willing to fork out for education, at all. After all, I have no kids and have never had kids. Why should I help pay for the education of other peoples’ children?
For that matter, I don’t own a car. I am able to commute by foot and by ferry, and by bus in the inner city (downtown Halifax and downtown Dartmouth). I don’t see why I should pay as much tax as I do for road and highway construction that doesn’t help me one iota. The list goes on.
In fact I don’t argue this way and I don’t propose to…yet. But this is exactly what the tax reform proponents are doing.
Well to be a grinch, I was looking forward to tax reform for selfish reasons – less tax for me. So now I’m either stuck with status quo: pay way more tax: municipal/provincial/federal than everyone else or the new suggestion “In essence, they’d like to see all property taxes reduced, with the lost tax revenue made up via an increase in the provincial income tax, with the province backfilling city coffers.” Resulting in same, but giving people from Yarmouth to Sydney control over the city’s pursestrings. I agree with this second approach but feel the provincial funds should come from transfer payments and more debt, not the province’s few and more productive overly taxed citizens. NS (and subsequently HRM) is a have not province, trying to meet Canadian standards it can’t afford (ie. doesn’t have oil). I have no problem with the province getting a boost from the other provinces to do so. We’re all part of the same family and it’s not fair to lose all our best and brightest to other provinces because we can’t realistically keep up. I guess the alternatives are to buy a worthless domicile not reflective of my income or move to a less taxed province.
SPENDING is the problem.
HRM are SPENDING junkies.
Dexter needs to cap all councils to the rate of inflation.
HRM et al need some discipline.
I vote for a 3 year freeze on spending.
You have to spend to make the city grow, but the way the city does it is wasteful. Everything is built improperly all to save a few bucks to put on another failed tender (see out roads, sewage treatment, the AV stuff in city hall to name a few).
What I am also curious about is somewhere in the past 5-10 year, the budget has doubled. Currently the salaries/benefits amount to 300 M (half of the current 600+M budget), so my question is have the salaries also doubled in this time-span? If so, that is where the first hacking needs to be done before they were to think of limiting the service budgets of services for us, their employer! Maybe they need to be reminded of who employs them…