As the city of Saint John continues to negotiate the “new deal” action plan that has divided council over the lack of short term measures found in the report, a labour analyst for the New Brunswick Police Association says the talk around binding arbitration reform is a distraction from the more important issues at play.
“We’re all on board with taxation reform, but he’s trying to undermine the police and fire binding arbitration process, which is a red herring, because we’ve only had one binding arbitration with the police in the last 28 years,” said Bob Davidson of the NBPA.
“So they’re going down a rabbit-hole chasing this, undermining the binding arbitration… it should be a non-issue and we should be concentrating on the real issues that affect the city of Saint John and that is tax reform,” he added.
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Binding arbitration reform is one of the 20 action points set out in the “new deal” document and has long been desired by the city, which estimates that protective services wages account for about a third of the annual budget.
Council voted to table the proposal for 30 days on July 11 after a lengthy debate on whether to accept the report or not, leaving council at a stalemate.
Davidson said the city needs to unite with citizens and worker’s groups to push for an end to tax exemptions for heavy industry, along with the regionalization of services like police and fire that would make the outlying communities of the Saint John area contribute more to the financial health of the city.
Davidson said the NBPA supports the conclusions of the Finn report of 2008 that calls for the modernization of local governments through the increase of regionalized services.
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“John-Guy Finn gave his report in 2008 and said clearly there should be regional services and regional taxation. It’s been 11 years since that came out it’s still very true,” he said.
“When you have regional services and regional taxation you don’t get into these little fights about user fees and who’s paying what. Everybody is in the same circle, you’re all moving together as one big force.”
Tuesday night at Saint John mayor Don Darling’s beers and budgets town hall event Davidson presented Darling with a letter outlining the association’s concerns with binding arbitration reform and calling for the sides to work together on the larger issues of regionalization, tax reform, and the monetization of Saint John Energy.
“The attack on binding arbitration procedures will allow the real issues to be side tracked while we fight with each other instead of joining together,” Davidson wrote.
“The province, the outlying areas and heavy industry will be happy to see this internal fight in the media.”
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This comes after Davidson delivered a letter to premier Blaine Higgs that argues “municipalities either do not understand the process or are deliberately attempting to undermine the process” and that the financial situation of Saint John depends on the implementation of fair taxation.
Davidson goes on to argue that “ability to pay” criteria ends up penalizing workers while allowing municipalities to fund “political projects,” listing as examples the $187 million property tax deal with the Canaport LNG plant, $4 million borrowed for the new Field House building, as well as the $112,000 subsidy for the Saint John Sea Dogs.
But while tax reform is looked at by many as the biggest hope for the city’s long term financial stability, some are concerned over the gap in short term measures to guide Saint John through the next few budgets, where the structural deficit is expected to run anywhere from $9-$12 million.
A former councillor and current Liberal MLA for Saint John Harbour says the current council should do all it can to fight for a better deal.
“This council should fight to improve the deal. I don’t think the deal as it stands has any time limits in it, it doesn’t offer anywhere near enough to solve the problem. It talks about it, but talk’s cheap, I mean action is what we need right,” said Gerry Lowe.
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“I’ve read it over, I’ve seen it and I don’t think it’s enough. It’s like the $300,000 you save in taxes on transit. Well that’s $300,000 a long way from nine to ten to twelve million dollars that we actually need in this city.”
The new deal report was produced as part of a three year temporary funding agreement of $22 million offered by the previous Liberal government in 2018 which was intended to bridge the budget shortfall of the next several years and avoid deep cuts to protective services.
But as the city has continue to push for short term aid, the minister responsible for local governments says it’s time to start asking when the requests for more money will end.
“We all have to wonder after a while, when is enough enough,” minister Jeff Carr said.
“At the beginning of this discussion a couple years ago it was x amount of money would be enough and now we’re seeing it’s not really quite enough even though our new government has committed to another $10 million for the last three year payment plan to get us to 2022.”
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Carr recently sent a letter to Darling claiming that the short term measures in the report add up to $6.1 million, leaving the city with only about $3 to $4 million left to cut.
When asked if he would reconsider the first phase of municipal tax reform, allowing Saint John to receive $9 million of the heavy industry right away while other communities would have to wait Carr said any municipal tax reform will be done fairly for the entire province and be phased in to avoid a major shock to provincial coffers.
“I don’t think that we want to get into the business of picking winners and losers. Saint John obviously and common council understand that there are implications province-wide,” he said.
“That’s why when we did our changed to the accommodation levy it was a province-wide thing for all municipalities that would benefit Saint John as well. We’ve thrown that life-vest out for not only Saint John but the advantage is for everyone going forward.”
Carr said he is hoping to meet with Darling in the next week to talk about what can be done to reach a deal that the two sides can live with.