Fiscal future of Halifax previewed at budget committee

At the Tuesday meeting of the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) budget committee, regional councillors were given a preview of the blueprint that will help decide how the municipality will spend taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars over the coming years.

Chief administrative officer (CAO) Jaques Dubé gave his budget presentation detailing how the HRM’s capital budget will grow from $477 million to $614 million — a 29 per cent increase over the next three years.

A projected rise in debt funding was a major point of contention among councillors.

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As Dubé outlined, staff were asking council to approve a debt increase of $22 million to help the municipality meet the demands that come with the level of unprecedented growth it’s not only expecting but experiencing at the moment.

“We’re in growth mode and with growth comes responsibility,” he said.

Dubé portrayed the budget as a key moment in the future of Halifax and stressed that instead of reducing the HRM’s debt by $13 million over the next three years, it would be important to increase it by $22 million.

The proposal had Mayor Mike Savage expressing concern.

Savage said HRM has done a good job of managing its debt since 1996 and said the municipality has paid down $100 million of that debt.

He said he felt that the municipality is in good shape and was leery of taking on further debt unless it was done right.

“Debt is a tool to be used but not to be used for operating,” said Savage.

“You don’t use debt unless you use it in my view for big projects that can be leveraged by support from other levels of government.”

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Adding $22 million in debt would roughly equate to a $76.00 increase on the average tax bill, said Jane Fraser, HRM’s chief financial officer.

“That’s rough math,” said Fraser.

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The budget committee has yet to decide what number they would peg as a tax rate increase.

Last year, staff recommended a 2.9 per cent increase, but council was able to make some adjustments and limit the final increase to 2.4 per cent.

Dubé said he and the financial staff want to keep the tax hike alongside the rate of inflation — somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 per cent.

Climate change was a big point of discussion for many councillors around the table.

Coun. Richard Zurawski said he was “so pleased” with the capital budget’s attention to climate change and looks forward to digging into more details later, like updating the fleet of buses to electric power.

No permanent decisions were made on Tuesday but a final decision will come soon.

Halifax Regional Council will be voting to approve a three-year plan but voting to accept the budget for 2020-21 alone. As Fraser clarified, the next two years’ budgets would be approved in principle for capital planning measures.