Well another year and another annual tax rate increase for property owners in the Town of Rothesay. The tax rate has been raised from $1.21 per $100 of assessed value to $1.22. This marks the third year in a row that council has increased spending faster than its tax base has expanded.
Rather than curbing their spending, councillors have opted for a cash bailout from Rothesay’s property owners. The tax hike was approved unanimously last night with almost no debate. Apparently Council believes taxpayers are a bottomless money pit.
To put Rothesay’s tax rate in context; A $400,000 home in Rothesay will have a 2017 tax bill of about $4,880. That same house in Toronto would pay about $2,800 in taxes. In other words, the Rothesay homeowner pays about 72% more but gets one hell of a lot fewer amenities than the Torontonian family.
More worrisome than Rothesay’s tax increase is the rate at which Council is burning through its cash reserves and operating surpluses. Unchecked, this will mean we will see even higher tax bills next year.
Grant Brenan, the finance chair has his work cut out for him especially with a trio of tax and spenders who, together with the Mayor, brought their sense of entitlement to spend your money with them from the old council. Any read of the town’s finances shows that a big part of the problem is the capital spending decisions made by these councillors when they were members of the last Council.
The three members of the old guard (The deputy Mayor, Wells, and McGuire) look like they’re still chasing redundant projects like the nearly $20 million New Arena & Field House or a $1.2m pedway in the middle of nowhere. It’s clear they just don’t get it.
Where are the new tax dollars going you may ask? Well the additional revenue generated from the latest tax increase won’t won’t be enough to cover the debt servicing costs of the Rothesay Common “Upgrade” project let alone its already over-budget operating costs.
So unless Councillor Brenan, can force some discipline on Council we are clearly in for increasing financial pain.
Are there ways we could save money?
Well yes there are. The regionalisation of services is one way. That is sharing big ticket facilities with our neighbours.
It was clear from last night’s council meeting, however, that Rothesay Council’s old guard think regional cooperation is ok only as long as Rothesay can continue to build its own little empire.
This attitude was clearly on display when a representative of the Fundy Regional Services Commission got a hostile reception from two councillors. One even suggested the Regional Recreation plan was biased. It looked to me like they were less concerned about exploring regional cooperation and more concerned that adoption of a regional recreation plan might impact their pipe-dream of a new Rothesay Arena (That project has been on very cost life-support fed by high-priced consultant’s reports and land acquisition costs for nearly a decade now without any sign of a real pulse).
What those councillors don’t seem to understand is that capital intensive recreational facilities are very expensive to build, operate, and maintain. Regionalisation is the only way they are affordable and that is the only route to federal and provincial financial support.
The unwillingness of some councillors to fully cooperate and engage with the Regional Services Commission demonstrates petty parochial politics at …at best. Incredible that some would rather hit up their own cash-strapped taxpayers than play in someone else’s sandbox at lower cost.
Rothesay’s Priorities Document was dropped into the Council kit without the usual public fanfare. Why?
The Rothesay Council Priorities document showed up in the council kit last night without the usual public fanfare. It looked like an afterthought as there was little discussion except to note that as far as the Arena project is concerned, there isn’t a consensus as to its future.
Perhaps someone decided that the public might twig to the fact that Council had met behind closed doors to adopt it? If they did, as I’ve said before, that might well bring them into conflict with the Municipalities act, which requires Council meetings to be open to the public with very few exceptions. We’ll see if this issue of closed door decisions has legs from an open government perspective…stay tuned…
Developers in the crosshairs…again.
The Council also sent the Hillcrest Apartment development back to the drawing board last night by tabling the rezoning application once again. It is quite amazing to see the contortions Council is going through on this.
Staff recommendations were not displayed as presented in the Staff memo. Perhaps because if followed a zoning applicant would have to wait a year to resubmit???
The town’s zoning bylaw ( and quite likely the Community Planning Act) requires that applicants who are denied rezoning, must wait one year before reapplying.
Yet this rezoning exercise has seen several tabling motions, referral back to PAC, 2 public meetings, and several “reworks” involving Town staff…
Without a program, it’s difficult to know who is actually driving this. Town staff and some councillors appear to be way out ahead of the developer. I’m beginning to have some sympathy him as it looks increasingly like he’s getting badly jerked around.
It will be interesting to see if, at the end of the day, this convoluted process generates any litigation. As a casual observer, it looks like council may be pushing the limits on the “motion to table” by using it to repeatedly put off a decision. Perhaps so as not to trigger the zoning bylaw’s one year time out before a reapplication after rejecting an application.
Meanwhile, any Councillors who might be talking to affected property owners behind the scenes have to be careful about the appearance of bias. The longer this goes on the greater the risk that this will end up in court with taxpayers, once again paying expensive legal bills.