Halifax Regional Council this week kicked off with a budget committee meeting. The budget committee is the same as regional council except it has slightly different rules and it discusses just one thing: the budget. HRM’s budget is its road map for spending throughout the year. It lists the municipality’s priorities on paper and dictates […]
budget
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Y’all shovel-ready for this?
Halifax Regional Council’s committee of the whole rounded out this week’s budget talks by approving a list of capital projects that are far along enough in the planning process that shovels could break ground asap. (Or could be brought to that point relatively quickly.) This comes in the middle of back-and-forth discussions about which projects […]
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All the things the library has done for Halifax residents since shutting its doors for COVID-19
Since Halifax Public Libraries had to close its doors to the public on March 16 thanks to the coronavirus, its staff has worked to come up with creative and innovative ways to uphold the ever-expanding responsibilities libraries hold in our communities. HPL chief librarian and CEO Åsa Kachan appeared before regional council on Wednesday, in […]
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Episode three of Budget is Blind streamed live on HRMflix today, here’s what happened
At today’s Halifax Regional Council committee of the whole meeting, councillors and mayor Savage went for round three of batting around the C19-revised budget. Today Brad Anguish, top boss of transportation and public works, was back on the line, answering questions about the difference between a prune (fruit) and pruning (the act of trimming back […]
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HRM’s budget committee settles on tax rate and extra spending for 2020/21
Halifax Regional Council’s budget committee settled on a tax rate and some extra spending for the 2020/21 year this week. The way the budget process unfolds in Halifax is set up to increase clarity and create more space for filtering out wants versus needs. The result, if given final approval from council, will be a […]
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Council approves 2019-20 budget
City council approved $163 million in capital spending and $793.7 million municipal expenditures in the budget for 2019-2020 this week. The city’s been shaking up the budget process for over five years, and this year’s parking lot of shopping expenses was the latest attempt to make the process more effective. Tuesday’s meeting was more ceremonial […]
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Council says no to spending surplus money on parking lot expenses
After much debate, Halifax Regional Council voted against using the $20 million surplus reserve to keep residential and commercial tax rates down. The rate will go to a final vote at council at 2.3 percent, meaning a $43.83 increase on the average home tax bill of $1,979. Mayor Mike Savage recommended taking $900,000 from last […]
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Council to vote on spending surplus money to keep tax bill down
O n Friday, council will decide how it’s going to pay for the grocery list of parked expenses approved for next fiscal year. At the last budget meeting, council hacked the list of $7,118,400 parking lot items almost in half, approving $3,704,100 worth of additional department expenses. The parking lot process, which aims to help […]
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Halifax’s bike network dream in jeopardy
Despite the best-laid plans of council, Halifax’s ambitious hope for a bike network throughout the urban core won’t be possible by 2020. In fact, based on city hall’s current budget it might not meet the original deadline of 2022 at all. “Obviously, we won’t be able to build this out to 2022 with the draft […]
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Halifax doubles down on consultants
Halifax Regional Municipality has nearly doubled the amount of money it spends on consultants, according to an analysis of the approved 2018-19 budget, but whether the city is getting what it pays for is harder to determine. Council earmarked $2.08 million for consulting fees this year, compared to the $956,600 it spent last year. It’s […]
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Customers of the state
We’re used to being thought of as customers—that the money we spend comes with certain entitlements, and that we should wield influence over those we spend it with. In the sense of expenditures on regular goods and services, this is largely true—justly or unjustly. Those of us who’ve worked in a service profession have no […]
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Council split on budget approval
It’s a bit of a bad news story if you ask Tim Outhit. Council approved HRM’s billion-dollar 2018-19 budget on Tuesday after some three hours of debate, with Outhit and fellow councillor Shawn Cleary being the only two votes against. The financial plan increases the average tax bill in Halifax by 1.975 percent—about $37 per single-family […]